Nii is a
Trans–New Guinea language of the
Chimbu–Wahgi branch spoken in the highlands of
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea, officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is an island country in Oceania that comprises the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and offshore islands in Melanesia, a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean n ...
.
Nii has an unusual number of
lateral consonant
A lateral is a consonant in which the airstream proceeds along one or both of the sides of the tongue, but it is blocked by the tongue from going through the middle of the mouth. An example of a lateral consonant is the English ''L'', as in ''L ...
s: a typical alveolar flap, , plus both
dental and
velar lateral fricatives, and , which are voiced between vowels and do not occur in initial position.
[Stucky, Alfred; Stucky, Dellene (1973).]
Nii phonology
. In Alan Healey (ed.), Studies In languages of the Ok family, 37-78. Workpapers In Papua New Guinea Languages, 2. Ukarumpa: Summer Institute of Linguistics.
Phonology
Vowels
Consonants
:
* is evidently before a consonant
:
** is before /r/; in word-final position this sequence becomes ~ .
:
*** may have a vocoid release at the end of a syllable before a consonant.
The account of the initial allophones of is confused, and some of the other positions are not completely clear.
References
*
Chimbu–Wahgi languages
Languages of Western Highlands Province
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