Grand Valley Dani, or simplyDani,^[3] is one of the most populousPapuan languages inIndonesian New Guinea (also known as Papua). TheDani people live in theBaliem Valley of the Western Highlands.

Dialectical differentiation is great enough thatEthnologue 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 (Dani-Kurima, Kurima), Upper Bele, Lower Bele, Lower Kimbin (Kibin), 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.

Grand Valley Dani has established its own orthography during a conference between linguists of theDutch New Guinea government and different missionary bodies in February 1961. This is the phonology of the Central Grand Valley Dani language:^[4]

Unlike other orthographies of local languages in Indonesia (largely based onthe standard orthography), the original Grand Valley Dani orthography (the current one might be not known) hasj instead ofy, in common withthe Indonesian old spelling.

• The letters ⟨p, t, k⟩ are pronounced as aspirated /pʰ,tʰ,kʰ/ in word-initial position and as [β,ɾ,ɣ] in intervocalic positions, respectively. They merge with voiceless /p,t,k/ 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 /p,t,k/ or as geminated /pː,tː,kː/.^[5]
• The phoneme/h/ merges with preceding or following phonemes:^[6]
  • It aspirates preceding ⟨p, t, k⟩, creating effectively phonemic aspirated consonants in intervocalic positions (japha/japʰa/ "they fought").
  • It alsocompensatorily lengthened adjacent vowel or sonorants (except/j/,/w/), however, one element of the most adjacent lengthened vowel to/h/ is devoiced (wamhe/wamhe/,[wamm̥ɛ] "pig (with connective morpheme)").

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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", butwetathy "I roasted".

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.

The Dani language differentiates only two basic colours,mili for cool/dark shades such as blue, green, and black, andmola for warm/light colours such as red, yellow, and white. This trait makes it an interesting field of research for language psychologists, such asEleanor Rosch, investigating theWhorf hypothesis.^[8][9]

• van der Stap, P. (1966).Outline of Dani Morphology(PDF). Martinus Nijhoff. Archived fromthe original(PDF) on February 15, 2019.
• Bromley, H. Myron (1961).The Phonology of Lower Grand Valley Dani(PDF). Van Het Koninklijk Instituut Voor Taal-, Land- En Volkenkunde. Archived fromthe original(PDF) on May 8, 2018.

• Dani languages
• Languages of Western New Guinea

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