Nii language

Nii is a Trans–New Guinea language of the Chimbu–Wahgi branch spoken in the highlands of Papua New Guinea.

Nii
Ek Nii
Native to	Papua New Guinea
Region	Western Highlands Province
Native speakers	(12,000 cited 1991)
Language family	Trans–New Guinea Chimbu–Wahgi Wahgi Nii
Language codes
ISO 639-3	nii
Glottolog	niii1240

Nii has an unusual number of lateral consonants: a typical alveolar flap, /ɺ/, plus both dental and velar lateral fricatives, /ɬ̪/ and /𝼄/, which are voiced between vowels and do not occur in initial position.

Phonology

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
High	i	u~ʊ
Near-High	ɪ~ᵻ
Mid	ɛ		o~ɔ
Open	a

Consonants

Nii consonants (Stucky 1973)

		Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar
Nasal		m	n̪	n		ŋ
Prenasalized		ᵐb	ⁿdz	ⁿd		ᵑɡ
Oral		p	s̪	r		k
Lateral			ɬ̪	ɺ		𝼄
Approximant		w			j

Nii consonant allophones (Stucky 1973)

Phoneme	word- initial	inter- vocalic	word- final	utterance- final
/p/	[p]~[b]		[pᵊ]~[pʰ]	[pʰ]
/s/	[s̪]~[t̪s̪]~[t̪]	[s̪]~[t̪]	[s̪]~[t̪s̪]
/r/	[t]~[r](?) (after another word)	[ɾ]~[r]	[r̥] (after a vowel)
/k/	[k]~[ɡ]		[kᵊ]~[kʰ]	[kʰ]
/mb/	[mb]	[mb]~[mp]	[mpᵊ]~[mpʰ]	[mpʰ]
/ndz/	[n̪d̪z]~[n̪t̪s]***		[n̪d̪z]~[n̪t̪s]~[n̪s]
/nd/	[nd]~[nt]		[ntᵊ]~[ntʰ]	[ntʰ]~[nt𐞩̥]
/ŋɡ/	[ŋk]~[ŋɡ]		[ŋkᵊ]~[ŋkʰ]	[ŋkʰ]
/ɬ/	NA	[ɮ̪]*	[ɬ̪]
/ɺ/	NA	[ɺ]**	NA
/𝼄/	NA	[ʟ̝]	[𝼄]~[𝼄ᵊ]	[𝼄]

* /ɬ/ is evidentally [l̪] before a consonant

** /ɺ/ is [l] before /r/; in word-final position this sequence becomes [lt𐞩̥] ~ [ltʰ].

*** /ndz/ may have a vocoid release [n̪d̪zᶦ] at the end of a syllable before a consonant.

The account of the initial allophones of /r/ is confused, and some of the other positions are not completely clear.

Further reading

• Stucky, Al (1994). "Organised Phonology Data" (PDF). {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
• Stucky, Alfred and Dellene Stucky 1973. "Nii phonology", in Alan Healey (ed.), Studies in languages of the Ok family, "Workpapers in Papua New Guinea Languages" 2, pp. 37-78. [1], [2]