Nalik language

The Nalik language is spoken by 5,000 or so people, based in 17 villages in Kavieng District, New Ireland, Papua New Guinea. It is an Austronesian language and member of the New Ireland group of languages with a subject–verb–object (SVO) phrase structure. New Ireland languages are among the first Papua New Guinea languages recorded by Westerners.

Laxudumau, spoken in the village of Lakudumau, is transitional to Kara, but is not intelligible to speakers of Nalik.

Speakers

Speakers of Nalik reside in a series of villages in northern central New Ireland. The Nalik speaking region is an approximately Template:Convert-long band of the island that spans approximately Template:Convert wide and is flanked on its north by the Kara-speaking region and to its south by speakers of Kuot, the only non-Austronesian language on New Ireland.

In the past, Lugagon, Fesoa, and Fessoa have been used to reference Nalik, which are all names of villages in the region.

Phonology

Consonants

A Nalik phonology analysis was developed by Clive H. Beaumont.

Consonant phonemes

	Labial	Alveolar	Velar	Glottal
Stop	Template:IPA link Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link
Fricative	Template:IPA link Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link
Nasal	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link (ng)
Tap/Flap		Template:IPA link
Lateral		Template:IPA link
Semivowel	Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link

	Front	Central	Back
High	Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link
Mid	Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link
Low		Template:IPA link
Diphthong		ai oi au

Grammar

Nalik consonant system

In West Coast and Southern East Coast dialects and when preceded by vowels, and , two non-coronal voiceless stops, are transformed into fricatives. Additionally, the voiceless fricatives become voiced.

When immediately preceded by a vowel the following consonants change their voicing:

and become [β] (written as v)

becomes

becomes [ɣ] (written as x)

The following are examples of these characteristics:

'I always go'
the houses	the house
his book	his tree
the youths	the youth (singular)
I see	I saw

Nouns

Nouns in Nalik are categorized as being uncountable or countable nouns. Nouns can be part of a noun phrase or can be an independent subject referenced in a verbal complex. When used as subjects, some uncountable nouns are co-referential with plural subject markers; however, those are the exceptions and are usually marked with singular subject markers. With uncountable nouns, numerical markers cannot be used. Countable nouns, however, can be singular or plural and can be modified by numerical markers.

Personal pronouns

person	singular	non-singular
first		(inclusive) (exclusive)
second
third		, ,

Variations in the third person non-singular pronouns are attributed to rapid speech and regional variants. In rapid speech often becomes . In the Northern Eastern Coast is the variant used. In the South East Coast is the variant used. is used primarily by younger speakers from all areas.

Personal pronouns can notably be utilized in the same way as related nouns such as 'a woman' () being replaced with 'she' ().

• ('The woman will come.')
• ('She will come.')

Numbers

The Nalik counting system is reflective of using one's hand to count and indicative of the style in which they do so. They begin with an open palm and bring individual fingers down per digit counted and the action of doing so is shown in their counting system. As such, the Nalik counting system contains elements of a base-five counting system; however, when proceeding past ten, the counting system uses elements of base ten.

The word for the number five, , can be analyzed as the phrase : being a third-person indicator, being a negation particle, and meaning 'hand'. It can, therefore, be translated to 'no hand' as all fingers have been lowered.

The numbers six through nine are also representative of this pattern. In these numbers, the phrase describes the act of lowering additional fingers.

Past ten, the counting system starts to use combinations of ten in multiples of a number one to nine. Higher numbers in the hundreds use "ten squared" as a base.

Nalik Number System

Number	Word		Number	Phrase	Meaning
1			10
2			20		10 x 2
3			30		10 x 3
4			40		10 x 4
5		Meaning	50		10 x 5
6		it goes down-one	60		10 x (5+1)
7		it goes down-two	70		10 x (5+2)
8		it goes down-three	80		10 x (5+3)
9		it goes down-four	90		10 x (5+4)
			100		10 x 10

Wh-questions

Interrogatives in Nalik occur in the same position as adverbs, prepositional phrases, and nouns, and bear the same grammatical relations. Several interrogatives are built off the base word , meaning 'what'.

Wh-question words

	what
+ modifying NP	which
+ 'also'	why (rhetorical)
	why
	with what, how, why
	why
	where
	which
	when
	who
	whose
	how
	how many, how much

Word order

The Nalik language features an SVO sentence structure that is common to the languages of the New Ireland–Tolai languages.

Example sentences

	Translation
	The boy is giving/sending the money to his brother
	He's giving/sending (it) to his brother.
	The boy will give some money to his brother next payday.