Nii language

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

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. [2], [3]