Nias language


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

The following dialects are distinguished in Ethnologue.
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 :
FrontCentralBack
Close
Mid
Open

Phonetic descriptions of the sounds traditionally written as and greatly vary. Sundermann and Halawa et al. describe them as prenasalized stop and prenasalized trilled stop for the northern dialect, while Brown records them as trill and trilled stop for the southern dialect. In an acoustic study of Nias dialects from three locations, Yoder shows a complex pattern of four phonetic realizations of and : plain stop, prenasalized stop, stop with trilled release, stop with fricated release.
The status of initial is not determined; there are no phonetic vowel-initial words in Nias.

Grammar

Nias has an ergative–absolutive alignment. It is the only 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 :
independentabsolutivegenitiveergative
realis		S = A
irrealis
1.sg.ya'o / / / / -guu-
2.sg.ya'ugö / / -u / ö-
3.sg.ya'ia / -niai-ya-
1.pl.incl.ya'itaita-data-
1.sg.excl.ya'agandra'aga / -mama-
2.pl.ya'ami / -mimi-
3.pl.ya'iraira-rala-ndra-

Independent pronouns are used:
Absolutive pronouns are used:
  • as the S argument of independent intrasitive and nominal clauses
  • as the P argument of transitive verbs in independent clauses
  • as the stimulus with intransitive verbs expresing emotions or states of mind
Genitive pronouns are used:
  • as possessor, e.g. ama-gu "my father"
  • following certain prepositions, e.g. khö-gu "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 pronouns are used:
  • as the A argument in independent transitive clauses
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 calls "jussive" mood.

Noun case marking (mutation)

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.
Unmutated formMutated form
fv
td
sz
cz
kg
bmb
dndr
voweln + 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 clauses
  • following certain prepositions and ha "only"
  • in fronted position
Additionally, A arguments in independent transitive clauses appear in unmutated case, cross-referenced by the corresponding ergative or irrealis pronoun.

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 intrasitive and nominal clauses
  • as the P argument of transitive verbs in independent clauses
  • as the stimulus with intransitive verbs expresing 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

    Citations