Nias language

File:WIKITONGUES- Anugrah speaking Li Niha.webm

A video of spoken Nias

The Nias language is an Austronesian language spoken on Nias Island and the Batu Islands off the west coast of Sumatra in Indonesia. It is known as Li Niha by its native speakers. It belongs to the Northwest Sumatra–Barrier Islands subgroup which also includes Mentawai and the Batak languages. It had about 770,000 speakers in 2000. There are three main dialects: northern, central and southern. It is an open-syllable language, which means there are no syllable-final consonants.

Dialects

Nias is typically considered to have three dialects.

• Northern dialect: particularly the Gunungsitoli variety, Alasa and Lahewa area.
• South dialect: South Nias, Gomo Area, Telukdalam Area and Batu Islands.
• Central dialect: West Nias, particularly in Sirombu and Mandrehe areas.

Cognate percentage among the dialects of Nias is about 80%.

The northern variant is considered the prestige dialect. The only complete Bible translation is written in the northern dialect and is used by speakers of all dialects.

Phonology

Nias has the following phonemes (sounds only found in the northern dialect are given in green, southern-only sounds are in red):

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link
Mid	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link Template:Angle bracket	Template:IPA link
Open		Template:IPA link

Consonants

		Labial	Dental/ Alveolar	Palato- alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stop/ Affricate	voiceless		Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link Template:Angle bracket		Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link Template:Angle bracket
	voiced	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link Template:Angle bracket		Template:IPA link
	prenasalized / trilled	Template:IPA link /Template:IPA link Template:Angle bracket	Template:IPA link /Template:IPA link Template:Angle bracket
Fricative	voiceless	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link			Template:IPA link Template:Angle bracket	Template:IPA link
	voiced	Template:IPA link Template:Angle bracket	Template:IPA link
Nasal		Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link			Template:IPA link Template:Angle bracket
Approximant		Template:IPA link /Template:IPA link Template:Angle bracket	Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link Template:Angle bracket	Template:IPA link Template:Angle bracket
Trill			Template:IPA link

Phonetic descriptions of the sounds traditionally written as Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr greatly vary. Sundermann (1913) and Halawa et al. (1983) describe them as prenasalized stop and prenasalized trilled stop for the northern dialect, while Brown (2005) records them as trill and trilled stop for the southern dialect. In an acoustic study of Nias dialects from three locations, Yoder (2010) shows a complex pattern of four phonetic realizations of Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr: plain stop, prenasalized stop, stop with trilled release, stop with fricated release.Template:Efn

The status of initial is not determined; there are no phonetic vowel-initial words in Nias.

The contrast between and (both written Template:Angle bracket in common spelling) is only observed in the southern dialect. Here, the fricative only occurs in initial position in the mutated form (see §Noun case marking (mutation)) of nouns beginning with f, e.g. ~ . The approximant can appear in initial and medial position, and is in free variation with for many speakers of the southern dialect. For the northern dialect, only fricative approximant is reported, corresponding to both sounds of southern Nias. The semivowel is a distinct phoneme and is written Template:Angle bracket in common spelling.

Grammar

Nias has an ergative–absolutive alignment. It is the only known ergative–absolutive language in the world that has a "marked absolutive", which means that absolutive case is marked, whereas ergative case is unmarked.

There are no adjectives in Nias; words with that function are taken by verbs.

Pronouns

The following table lists the free and bound pronouns of Nias (green = only used in the northern dialect, red = only used in the southern dialect):

Pronouns and pronominal affixes

	independent	absolutive	genitive	ergative realis	S = A irrealis
1.sg.	ya'o / ya'odo / ya'oto	ndra'o(do) / ‑do / ndrao(to)	-gu	u-	gu-
2.sg.	ya'ugö	ndra'ugö / ‑ö / ndraugö	-u / ‑mö	ö-	gö-
3.sg.	ya'ia	ia / ya	-nia	i-	ya-
1.pl.incl.	ya'ita	ita	-da	ta-	da-
1.pl.excl.	ya'aga	ndra'aga / ‑ga	-ma	ma-	ga-
2.pl.	ya'ami	ami / -mi	-mi	mi-	gi-
3.pl.	ya'ira	ira	-ra	la-	ndra-

Independent pronouns are used:

• as the predicate in nominal clauses

• as the P argumentTemplate:Efn of transitive verbs in dependent (including relative and nominalized) clauses

• following certain prepositions and 'only'
• in fronted (topicalized) position

Absolutive pronouns are used:

• as the S argument of independent intransitive and nominal clauses (in the southern dialect, only in realis mood)

• as the P argument of transitive verbs in independent clauses

• as the stimulus with intransitive verbs expressing emotions or states of mind

Genitive pronouns are used:

• as possessor, e.g. 'my father'
• following certain prepositions, e.g. 'to me'
• as the S argument in nominalized intransitive clauses

• as the A argument in nominalized transitive clauses

• as the A argument in relative clauses with the P argument of a transitive verb as head

Ergative (realis) pronouns are used:

• as the A argument in independent transitive clauses (in the southern dialect, only in realis mood)

Irrealis pronouns are used in the southern dialect:

• as the S argument in independent intransitive clauses in irrealis mood

• as the A argument in independent transitive clauses in irrealis mood

In the northern dialect, the irrealis pronouns are restricted to third person, and are employed in what Sundermann (1913) calls "jussive" mood. Template:Interlinear

Noun case marking (mutation)

Case marking of nouns is indicated in Nias by mutation of the initial consonant. Several consonants are subject to mutation as shown in the table below. Where a word begins in a vowel, either n or g is added before the vowel; the choice of n or g is lexically conditioned. (For example, is 'village federation', is 'bracelet'.)

Initial mutations

Unmutated form	Mutated form
f	v
t	d
s	z
c
k	g
b	mb
d	ndr
vowel	n + vowel g + vowel

Other consonants do not change.

Unmutated case

The unmutated case form is used in citation. It further appears in all functions described above for independent pronouns:

• as the predicate in nominal clauses
• as the P argument of transitive verbs in dependent (including relative and nominalized) clauses
• following certain prepositions and 'only'
• in fronted (topicalized) position

Additionally, A arguments in independent transitive clauses appear in unmutated case, cross-referenced by the corresponding ergative or irrealis pronoun. Template:Interlinear

Mutated case

The mutated case form of the noun corresponds in function to both the absolutive and the genitive pronouns:

• as the S argument of independent intransitive and nominal clauses

• as the P argument of transitive verbs in independent clauses

• as the stimulus with intransitive verbs expressing emotions or states of mind
• as possessor

• following certain prepositions
• as the S argument in nominalized intransitive clauses
• as the A argument in nominalized transitive clauses
• as the A argument in relative clauses with the P argument of a transitive verb as head

External links

• Nias wordlist, Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database
• Online dictionary of Nias
• Kamus Nias-Indonesia (Nias-Indonesian Dictionary)
• Articles on Nias Language (in Indonesian)