Nakanai is spoken by the Nakanai tribe inWest New Britain, a province ofPapua New Guinea. It is anAustronesian language, belonging to theMalayo-Polynesian subgroup. Otherwise known as Nakonai, it also has dialects in the form of Losa, Bileki, Vere, Ubae, and Maututu.

The name Nakanai is natively pronouncedLakalai, as thealveolar nasal[n] has disappeared from thephonemic inventory of the language and has been replaced by[l].

The name given to the Nakanai people by the indigenous people, before theTolai name ofNakanai was adopted, was eitherMuku orMuu. Those were derogatory words, and in Nakanai mean 'to screw up the nose in distaste', and 'humming sound made by masked men', respectively.^[2]

Due to links between Nakanai and Eastern Oceanic languages, it is believed that its language family speakers arrived from the east of Papua New Guinea.^[2]

New Britain had experienced regular contact and settlement from 1840 to 1883, but the lack of coverage and useful records of the Nakanai region had the region deemedterra incognita.

Nakanai is spoken by people living in the West New Britain Province of Papua New Guinea. They live in around 45 villages in the coastal and hinterland regions of Cape Hoskins, Commodore Bay, Cape Reilnitz, Bangula Bay, and Cape Koas.^[3]

The dialects that make up the Nakanai language are Bileki, Ubae, Vele, Loso, and Maututu, respectively from the west-most to the east-most of the Nakanai-speaking areas.^[4]

Of all the dialects spoken, Bileki has the most native speakers due to being in a more densely populated area. It is common for speakers of other dialects to understand, or even speak, Bileki, but the reverse is not as common. There are 19 Bileki-speaking villages centered aroundCape Hoskins andCommodore Bay. It also has a number of names, includingBeleki andCentral Nakanai. South-East of the Bileki area are the Ubae speakers, located in the Ubae and Gusi villages.^[5] Vele speakers are centered on the coastal and adjacent regions of Bangula Bay, in particular, the villages of Tarobi, Pasusu, Sisimi, Gaekeke, Kai and Kaiamo.^[6] Loso (or Auka) is a dialect of Nakanai spoken in the Silanga region, inland of Lasibu Anchorage. The villages are Kotoo Babata and Loa, all resettled at Silanga; Um, Bagela, Bibisi and Sipa, all resettled at or near Uasilau; and Movai, Sabol, Saiko, and a portion of Sipa, which are still situated on traditional land in the bush.^[7] The villages of the Maututu dialect are Matililiu, Gomu, Apulpul, Baikakea, Bubuu, Mataururu, Kiava and Evase, all grouped on the eastern coast of the Nakanai area, between Toiru River and Cape Koas. These are all United Church Villages and have been influenced therefore by Tolai-speaking missionaries and Nassa shell traders, plus contact with Melamela to the east, Bileki and Vele to the west, and the inland languages Longeinga, Wasi and Kol.^[8]

The noun article is obligatory when referring to an object, and when addressing an object, the noun article is never used.

Avoiding the use of names in speech is a way of showing esteem, whether one is talking about a person in reference or when addressing them. To use a person's name without good reason is seen as a form of disrespect. Instead,kinship terms are preferred. Esteem, in face–to–face conversations, is also displayed by referring to the addressee in the third person.^[2]

In terms of case relations, "Nakanai role structure operates morphologically as follows: there are six contrastive cases, Actor, which appears as the immediately pre-verbal NP; Patient, which appears in the unmarked instance as the immediately post-verbal NP; Source; which is the NP immediately preceded by thepost-verbal ablative particle le; Beneficiary, which is encoded by inalienable possession suffixation of the verb; Instrument, signaled by ablative particle le, but appearing discontinuously from it, the Patient-NP obligatorily intervening; and Goal encoded by the preposition te."Additionally, directional verbs in chained sequence such as tavu (towards) and taro (away from) encode goal and source relationship respectively. relationships of Direction, Range, Location and comitative are encoded by prepositionally-coreferential topic deletion."^[9]

Fundamental division of Nakanai cases in case relations:

• Nuclear roles filling positions of referential prominence: actor, beneficiary, patient
• Nuclear roles filling positions of non-referential prominence: goal, instrument, source
• Peripheral roles (necessarily referentially non-prominent: location, direction, range, comitative

The actor is typically the animate entity credited for the action in a sentence. In Nakanai, the action includes the source, the undergoer and the experiencer of, "a caused or spontaneous process, or mental state or event." The actor noun phrase will precede the verb in the language.^[9]

The patient is affected by the action or state identified by the verb in a sentence. They receive this external action or exhibit a state identified by a verb.

In transitive clauses, the patient noun phrase is encoded by suffixation of the verb with a third-person singular affix-a. The accusative marking is optional for noun phrases with given information.

Japanese soldiers represent the new information.

The beneficiary or source noun phrases must precede the patient in a sentence, the two not being in the same sentence.

"The patient case appears in the nominal slot immediately following the verb, and potentially preceded by accusative suffix-a on the verb. This is the statistically most frequent occurrence of Patient."[9]

These represent the animate beneficiary of the action or state identified by a verb. They are an inalienable possession marking agreeing with the beneficiary in number and person inclusiveness.^[9]

Occurs mostly in ditransitive clauses, where it must occur in the nominal slot immediately following the verb:

For intransitive clauses they may represent: the inanimate force

the independent non-volitional cause, animate

inanimate

For transitive clauses, "[the] instrument is the case of the object accessory or tool involved in performing the action of the verb." They are always inanimate. With an actor, it appears as the last noun phrase in the clause, marked with post-verbal ablative particlele. Without an actor, it may appear as the clause topic. "it is not a plausible analysis to regardle marking Instrument-NP as signalling Instrument outranked by another role (Patient), like English with, since this alternative does not explain the invariant ordering of the instrumental clause."[9]

In ditransitive clauses, the source "represents the animate origin of an action in which a patient is moved away from source-entity by [an] actor"

source marked by ablative particlele, appears post-verbally in first nominal slot."[9]

Goals are encoded by the free particlete. It is the case of the entity toward which the action is directed. It includes: destination, purpose, place, extent, or reason or topic of conversation. It is usually the last noun phrase in the clause.^[9]

"Location may be optionally encoded by prepositionte in addition to the coverb encoding Locative. Prepositionte indicates that the embedded locative clause contains a nuclear case, viz. goal.

Depending on involvement of motion or whether the verb is transitive or not, there may be coreferential actor or patient deletion.

Coreferential topic deletion of actor noun phrase is not obligatory in the presence of motion verbs with the rootgo- 'to proceed'. "[9]

Range is encoded as the goal of the direction verbkara 'until/as far as', appearing as the main verb, or in a chained sequence with another verb. "It indicates a relationship of spatial extent or temporal duration:"

"This clause shows two instances of coreferential topic deletion in clauses in chained sequence. The obligatory coreferential topic deletion of the actor noun phrase potentially appearing withkara is illustrated in the second embedded clause. Note too that the preposition in this clause is optional."[9]

Nakanai has five vowels,⟨a, e, i, o, u⟩, and has the consonants⟨p, b, t, d, k, g, s, h, r, l, n, ng⟩.^[2]

Nakanaisyllables may be of the shape V or CV, with nocodas orconsonant clusters to be found anywhere in the language.

Phonology of the Nakanai language:^[9]

/i,u/ in initial position are heard as glides[j,w].[n] is mostly replaced by/l/ and is only heard across other dialects.

Younger Bileki speakers, typically younger than 30 years old, tend to drop the/h/ sound from their speech. The Methodist parts of Nakanai also drop the/h/ sound as a result of Kuanuan language influence.

The presence of English, Pidgin and Tolai brought in the change of/l/ to/n/ in areas where this change has occurred.^[2]

The dialects of Nakanai mainly differ in the sounds that they use.

For the most popular dialect, Bileki, their/g/s are/d/s,/k/s are/ʔ/s,/l/s are/n/s for a number of words, and/r/s are/s/s.

Bileki also shares phonological similarities with another language in the New Britain area, Melamela, which is located east of the Maututu-speaking regions. Phonological differences lie in the different rendition of certain phonemes.

In Ubae, the Bileki habit of dropping the/h/ sound from their speech has caused thela noun marker to turn intol- for words starting with a vowel. For example:

/k/ is present in Ubae speech,/l/ and/s/ are sometimes alternated in basic words, and the/l/ and/r/ change from their Vele neighbors is not present.

Like the Bileki dialect, the/h/ sound has been dropped from Vele speech. The/l/ is rendered as the/r/ sound, and the/k/ as the/ʔ/. Their noun markerla drops the/l/, transforming it to justa. Vele also has had contact with Bileki-speaking Methodist pastors, and thus the Methodist villages, Kaiamo and Sulu, speak a dialect that is moving closer to Bileki.

Similar to Bileki, the/h/ sound is missing. They also use the/n/ sound in place of/l/. Similar to Vele, the noun markerla is simplified to justa. Despite neighboring Vele, their/k/ sounds do not change to/ʔ/.

Maututu's phonemic inventory shares a strong resemblance with Bileki's.^[2]

Speakers exposed to English borrow English lexical items, as well as mix in words from Pidgin into their speech. The practice is frowned upon, despite being widely practiced.

Religion plays a part in the vocabulary used in the Nakanai-speaking regions. About 61.74% of speakers are Catholic, while the rest are Methodists of theUnited Church.The Catholic areas keep older Nakanai words that were replaced in other parts. Methodist areas borrow words from the Kuanuan language.

There are distinct kinship terms and their use depends on whether the person is being referred to or being addressed.^[2]

Nakanai has, over time, experiencedlexical innovation. One driving force behind lexical innovation in the language is to be able to "discuss matters without outsiders understanding key words." An example:

Lexical innovation also comes in the form of borrowing terms from the surrounding languages, mainly Tolai, Pidgin and English, to cover foreign objects. An example:

Before the borrowing of lexical terms, they would make do with creative reactions to new objects that arrived to New Britain from foreign sources.

Along with adding new terms, they have also expanded existing ones to match new experiences introduced by foreigners.

There are also unnecessary^{[editorializing]} borrowings in the forms of functional term andcalques:

Ubae, compared to its neighbor Vele, has numerous lexical differences from Bileki, taking from other Eastern Nakanai dialects. For example, consider the wordsla voto: this means 'dog'.Voto, or 'dog', is found in the Eastern Nakanai dialects; however, Ubae still uses the Bileki articlela instead ofe, which is found in other Eastern Nakanai dialects.^[2]

• Meso-Melanesian languages
• Languages of West New Britain Province

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