Grand Valley Dani language

Grand Valley Dani, or simply Dani, is one of the most populous Papuan languages in Indonesian New Guinea. The Dani people live in the Baliem Valley of the Western Highlands.

Dialects

Dialectical differentiation is great enough that Ethnologue assigns separate codes to three varieties:

Lower
Mid or Central, also known as Tulem
Upper

Lower Grand Valley Dani contains subdialects Lower Grand Valley Hitigima, Upper Bele, Lower Bele, Lower Kimbin, and Upper Pyramid. Hupla, traditionally considered a separate language, is closer to Lower Grand Valley than the varieties of Grand Valley Dani are to each other.

Phonology

Grand Valley Dani has established its own orthography during a conference between linguists of the Dutch New Guinea government and different missionary bodies in February 1961. This is the phonology of the Central Grand Valley Dani language:

Consonants

Unlike other orthographies of local languages in Indonesia, the original Grand Valley Dani orthography has j instead of y, in common with the Indonesian old spelling.

The letters ⟨p, t, k⟩ are pronounced as aspirated /,, / in word-initial position and as in intervocalic positions, respectively. They merge with voiceless /,, / syllable-finally, which is also represented by graphic voiced consonants ⟨b, d, g⟩. However, aspirated consonants still occur intervocalically.
* Medial ⟨pp, tt, kk⟩ are either pronounced as /,, / or as geminated /,, /.
The phoneme merges with preceding or following phonemes:
* It aspirates preceding ⟨p, t, k⟩, creating effectively phonemic aspirated consonants in intervocalic positions.
* It also compensatorily lengthened adjacent vowel or sonorants, however, one element of the most adjacent lengthened vowel to is devoiced.

Grammar

Verbs

Verbs in Grand Valley Dani are highly inflected for many tenses. Infinitive is marked by the suffix -in, although verb stems in -s- change to -t- before consonants: wetasin "to roast", but wetathy "I roasted".

Finite tenses

Although there are claimed "default" personal markers, the correspondences between tense suffixes and personal markers are often highly irregular. Nevertheless, inflections of verbs are still highly regular. Unless denoted in the table, verb forms are marked by personal markers.

Tense	Suffix
Near future	-ikin in the singular, -ukun in the plural. Never inflected by person, only by number.
Indefinite future	-isikin in the singular, -isukun in the plural. Never inflected by person, only by number.
Near past	-h-.
Remote past	-hikh- in the, -hukh- in the, and -hVk- elsewhere. -V- is an echo vowel from the personal markers, e.g. -hyky, -heken, etc.
Perfect past	Suffixing the near past with -tik in the, -ttik in the, -sip in the and -sik elsewhere. In the second person, the final consonants of original near past endings, when suffixed, have to be deleted + -ttik → -hettik, -hep + -sip → -hesip). The ending for is irregular: -hasik instead of *-hemsik.
Habitual	Replacing every instances of syllable-final -i- and -sik of the perfect past with -e- and -tek, respectively.
Habitual perfect	Infixing -si- into the main habitual ending. The ending for is irregular: -hesep → -hetesip instead of *-hesesip.

Semantics

The Dani language differentiates only two basic colours, mili for cool/dark shades such as blue, green, and black, and mola for warm/light colours such as red, yellow, and white. This trait makes it an interesting field of research for language psychologists, such as Eleanor Rosch, investigating the Whorf hypothesis.