Western Dani language
Western Dani, or Lani, is a Nuclear-Trans-New Guinea language. It is the Papuan language with the most speakers in Indonesian New Guinea. It is spoken by the Lani people in the province of Highland Papua.
| Western Dani | |
|---|---|
| Lani | |
| Region | Highland Papua, Indonesia |
| Ethnicity | Lani |
Native speakers | (180,000 cited 1993)[1] |
Trans–New Guinea
| |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | dnw |
| Glottolog | west2594 |
| This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. | |
The Baliem Valley tribes are called Oeringoep and Timorini in literature from the 1920s, but those names are no longer used.
Phonology edit
Consonants edit
The consonant phoneme inventory of Western Dani has been described as follows:[2]
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Velar | Glottal | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plain | lab. | |||||
| Nasal | m | n | ||||
| Plosive | voiceless | p | t | k | kʷ | ʔ |
| prenasal | ᵐb | ⁿd | ᵑɡ | ᵑɡʷ | ||
| Fricative | β | ɣ | ɣʷ | |||
| Flap | ɾ | |||||
| Lateral | l | |||||
| Approximant | w | ɹ | ||||
Vowels edit
Vowels /i, u, ɒ/ have allophones [ɪ, ʊ, ɔ].
Vowel length is contrastive in Western Dani, as illustrated by the minimal and near minimal pairs below:
| Quality | Short | Long |
|---|---|---|
| /e/ vs. /eː/ | / teʁe / ‘stick’ | / teːʁe / ‘drive away’ |
| /ɐ/ vs. /ɐː/ | / ɐɣe / ‘tail’ | / ɐːɣe / ‘steam’ |
| /ɒ/ vs. /ɒː/ | / kɒɾɒk / ‘fill’ | / kɒːɾɒk / ‘near’ |
| /u/ vs. /uː/ | / jum / ‘net bag’ | / uːm / ‘shoulder’ |
Consonant allophones edit
Consonants edit
At the beginning of words, oral stops have aspirated allophones [pʰ, tʰ, kʰ, kʷʰ]; intervocalically, voiceless /p t k / have voiced allophones [β d ~ ɾ ɣ ~ ʁ], for instance following the prefix no-/na- meaning "my".
| Word-initial | Intervocalic | Word-final | |
|---|---|---|---|
| /p/ | [ pʰɐɾum ] ‘corn’ | [ nɔβɐɾum ] ‘my corn’ | [ ɐːp ] ‘men’ |
| /t/ | [ tʰowe ] ‘bird’ | [ nɐɾowe] ‘my bird’ | [ ɐɾet ] ‘certainly’ |
| /k/ | [ kʰɒm ] ‘taro’ | [ nɐɣɒm ] ‘my taro’ | [ lek ] ‘no’ |
An intervocalic /ɣ/ is pronounced as [ʁ], and a /ɹ/ before a high vowel becomes a fricative [z].
References edit
- ^ Western Dani at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
- ^ Barclay, Peter (2008). A Grammar of Western Dani.