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. 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): Phonetic descriptions of the sounds traditionally written as ⟨mb⟩ and ⟨ndr⟩ 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 ⟨mb⟩ and ⟨ndr⟩: 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. The contrast between and (both written ⟨w⟩ 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. fakhe ~ wakhe. 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 ⟨ŵ⟩ 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): Independent pronouns are used: Ya'o zia'a 1SG.IND first.born:MUT 'I am the first-born.' Andrehe'e nasu si-usu ya'o DIST dog:MUT REL-bite 1SG.IND 'That's the dog that bit me.' Absolutive pronouns are used: Mofökhö ndra'o sick 1SG.ABS 'I am sick.' I-tegu ndra'o ama-gu 3SG.ERG-scold 1SG.ABS father-1SG.GEN 'My father scolds me.' Ata'u nasu ndrao afraid dog:MUT 1SG.ABS 'The dog is afraid of me.' Genitive pronouns are used: Löna ahono ve-mörö-nia not calm NR:MUT-sleep-3SG.GEN 'Her sleep was not restful.' La-faigi vamaoso-ra 3PL.ERG-see NR:MUT:IPF:raise-3PL.GEN 'They watched them raise [it].' U-fake zekhula ni-rökhi-nia 1SG.ERG-use coconut:MUT PASS-grate-3SG.GEN 'I used the coconut which she grated.' Ergative (realis) pronouns are used: I-tataba geu 3SG.ERG-cut wood:MUT 'He cut up the wood.' Irrealis pronouns are used in the southern dialect: Gu-möi ba fasa mahemolu 1SG.IRR-go LOC market tomorrow 'I want to go to the market tomorrow.' Gu-moturagö ndraugö khö-ra 1SG.IRR-IRR:tell.about 2SG.ABS DAT-3PL.GEN 'I'm going to tell them about you.' In the northern dialect, the irrealis pronouns are restricted to third person, and are employed in what Sundermann (1913) calls "jussive" mood. Ya-mu-'ohe 3SG.JUSS-JUSS-bring 'He shall bring it.'

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, öri ~ nöri is 'village federation', öri ~ göri is 'bracelet'.) 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: Additionally, A arguments in independent transitive clauses appear in unmutated case, cross-referenced by the corresponding ergative or irrealis pronoun. I-rino vakhe ina-gu 3SG.ERG rice:MUT mother-1SG.GEN 'My mother cooked rice.'

Mutated case

The mutated case form of the noun corresponds in function to both the absolutive and the genitive pronouns: Mate zibaya-nia meneßi die uncle:MUT-3SG.GEN yesterday 'His uncle died yesterday.' I-rino vakhe ina-gu 3SG.ERG rice:MUT mother-1SG.GEN 'My mother cooked rice.' omo ga'a-gu house older.sibling:MUT-1SG.GEN 'my brother's house'

Citations