Uneapa language
Uneapa (often called "Bali", natively "Uniapa") is an Oceanic language spoken by about 10,000 people on the small island of Bali (Uneapa), north of West New Britain in Papua New Guinea. It is perhaps a dialect of neighboring Vitu. Uneapa is one of the most conservative Oceanic languages, having retained most of Proto-Oceanic's final consonants with an echo vowel, such as "*Rumaq" "house" > "rumaka" and "*saqat" "bad" > "zaɣata". A sketch grammar of this language was published in 2002 by Malcolm Ross. Name. The name "Uneapa" is a variation of the native name "Uniapa" for  the island. In Vitu, the same island is called "Unea". Both names can come from a proto-form "*Uniap" or "*Uneap", reflecting the addition of an echo vowel in Uneapa and the regular loss of final consonants in Vitu. Classification. Uneapa, together with neighboring Vitu, forms a subgroup within the Meso-Melanesian cluster of the Oceanic languages. The two are sometimes considered to be a single language, called Bali-Vitu. However, there are some differences, particularly in their phonemic inventories, retention of final consoannts (which is lost in Vitu), pronoun systems, and word choices. In general, Uneapa tends to be  more conservative than Vitu in most respects. Phonology. Phonemically, Uneapa has 5 vowels and 14 consonants. Uneapa has a simple phonotactic structure, either V, CV, VV, CVV. Stress is located at the penultimate syllable. Optionally, clitic-final vowels may be lost, such as underlying "balitaza" "is not" becoming "baltaza". Example sentence. The following sentence illustrates the conservatism of Uneapa relative to Proto-Oceanic. Uneapa: Proto-Oceanic: