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)
Language family	Trans–New Guinea West Trans–New Guinea Irian Highlands ? Dani languages Dani proper Western Dani
Language codes
ISO 639-3	dnw
Glottolog	west2594

The Baliem Valley tribes are called Oeringoep and Timorini in literature from the 1920s, but those names are no longer used.

Phonology

Consonants

The consonant phoneme inventory of Western Dani has been described as follows:

Consonant phonemes

		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

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].

Vowels

Vowel phonemes

	Front	Central	Back
High	i iː		u uː
Mid	e eː		ɒ ɒː
Low		ɐ ɐː

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’