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Abstract:
Spoken mostly in Nias Island located in the west
part of Indonesia, Nias or Li Niha is a language which needs linguistic
elaboration. It has characteristics that make it a unique language among those
spoken in Indonesia, and to some extent, also has a few unusual features
compared to the world languages. Its uniqueness is not limited to having only
open syllables but also seen in other phonological issues, its orthography,
morphology and syntax. This is an analytical-qualitative research done
carefully by the writer as a native speaker of the language. In writing system,
Nias uses umlaut over the letter o, circumflex over the letter w,
and apostrophe between certain syllables.
Phonologically, it has voiced bilabial trill, voiced bilabial fricative, voiced
alveolar plosive trill, voiceless velar fricative and voiced dental fricative
sounds. Morphologically, it is unique in its mutation system of nouns and
peculiar type of ergativity. Syntactically, the language is also distinct in
its structures of word order, predicates, and reflexivity.
