Jeanette King

Sound change in Māori and the Influence of New Zealand English

This article investigates sound change in the vowels of Māori, the indigenous language of New Zealand. It examines the relationship between sound changes in Māori and in New Zealand English, the more dominant language, with which Māori has been in close contact for nearly 200 years. We report on the analysis of three adult speaker groups whose birth dates span 100 years. All speakers were bilingual in Māori and New Zealand English. In total the speech of 31 men and 31 women was investigated. Analysis was done on the first and second formant values, extracted from the vowel targets. There has been considerable movement in the Māori vowel space. We find that the sound change in the Māori monophthongs can be directly attributed to the impact of New Zealand English, however the situation for the diphthongs is not so clear cut. There is some evidence that both New Zealand English monophthongs and diphthongs are impacting on the Māori diphthongs, but so too are the Māori monophthongs. We conclude that although New Zealand English has had a strong influence on Māori, there is very strong evidence that new generations of speakers of Māori are acquiring a phonemic system with its own internal parameters and consistencies.

The MAONZE project: Changing uses of an indigenous language database

Abstract The MAONZE (Māori and New Zealand English) database consists of audio recordings that have been collected for the purpose of analyzing sound change over time in the Māori language. The database contains the Māori and English speech of nearly 70 male and female speakers of different age groups from a range of tribal areas. The time depth of the database is provided by the speech of 18 men and women born in the late 19th century and recorded in the mid to late 20th century. This paper describes the database and discusses issues surrounding its creation and use.

Interrupted Transmission and Rule Loss in Māori: The Case of ka

The Māori tense/aspect marker ka has historically two allomorphs: one, /ka:/, which is used when the rest of the verb phrase consists of only two morae, and the other, /ka/, for longer phrases. Recordings of native speakers born toward the end of the nineteenth century show that this distribution was at that time observed with a high degree of consistency. However, more recent speaker groups show variable behavior in this respect, with modern younger speakers tending to show abandonment of the allomorphy in favor of consistent use of the short form. This shift is attributable both to a proportional increase in the use of longer phrases over the same period and to the decreasing use of Māori generally, so that opportunities to acquire the inherited rule have diminished considerably.

Aspiration of Plosives in Māori: Change Over Time

Māori is the language of the indigenous people of New Zealand. Traditionally the Māori plosive consonants are regarded as unaspirated, in contrast to English voiceless plosives which are strongly aspirated in initial position. This paper traces the increase in aspiration in Māori plosives over time by analysing the Māori and English plosive consonants of three speakers born over a span of nearly 100 years. It shows that both the number of aspirated plosives and the degree of aspiration (measured by VOT) have increased from the oldest speaker (born in 1885) to the youngest speaker (born in 1972) in both languages. There may be some language internal factors at work, but influence from English is a likely cause for this change. The youngest speaker was born before the Māori language revitalization programme was established. The results provide a snapshot of the pronunciation of Māori stops before the development of the kōhanga reo revitalization movement (Māori language nests) in 1982.

Social categories are shared across bilinguals' lexicons

Abstract Dialects and languages are socially meaningful signals that provide indexical and linguistic information to listeners. Are the indexical categories that are shared across languages used in cross-linguistic processing? To answer this question English (L1)-Māori (L2) bilingual New Zealanders participated in a priming experiment which included English-to-Māori and Māori-to-English translation equivalents, and within-language repetition priming for Māori and English. Half of the English words were produced by standard New Zealand English (Pākehā English) speakers and half by Māori English speakers. We find robust evidence for within-language repetition priming for both Māori-only and English-only trials. Across languages, there is L1–L2 priming: both Pākehā English and Māori English successfully prime Māori. The effect size, however, is larger for Māori English–Māori trials than Pākehā English–Māori trials. In the L2–L1 direction Māori only primes Māori English, not Pākehā English. These results support the hypothesis that indexical categories – e.g., ethnic identity – facilitate word recognition across languages, particularly in the L2–L1 direction, where translation priming has not always been obtained in the literature. Lexical items and pronunciation variants are activated through conceptual links and social links during bilingual speech processing.

Changes in the phrasal lexicon of Māori: mauri and moe

Māori, the indigenous language of New Zealand, has been in considerable contact with English for over one hundred years. Over that time there have been documented changes in the pronunciation, grammar and lexicon of Māori. As a result we would also expect evidence of changes to the phrasal lexicon. A study of the words mauri and moe in the Māori language over the last 150 years shows that older formulae are becoming more restricted in their use and that formulae calqued from English have also appeared.

Ngā Nekehanga o te Whakahua i te Reo Māori i roto i te Rautau kua Hipa nei

Māori and English have been in increasing contact within New Zealand for over 200 years. The impact of each language on the other in vocabulary, which has been borrowed in both directions, is clear. More subtle is the mutual influence in the area of pronunciation. The MAONZE project has been investigating changes in the pronunciation of Māori and of the English of speakers of Māori, using recordings of seven kaumātua born in the 19th century who were interviewed by the Mobile Unit of Radio New Zealand in the 1940s (referred to in the text as the TK group), of ten kaumātua alive today (K), and of ten younger speakers (T). This paper describes our methodology and reports the results of the investigation of the long and short vowels of Māori as well as of some diphthongs. These were all studied acoustically, that is to say, using computers to analyse the sound waves characteristic of each sound. For each vowel and diphthong, and for each speaker, we attempted to analyse thirty examples, though some sounds are relatively rare, such as /ī/ and /ao/, so that this target could not always be achieved. The analysis did indeed find that there had been shifts in the pronunciation of these sounds over the three generations of speakers in the study. Except for the distinction between /a/ and /ā/, the length and qualitative difference between the historical long and short vowels is decreasing. Most striking is the shift in /u/ and /ū/ to a much more forward position in the mouth, a change which parallels movement in English. The five diphthongs studied were /au, ou, ao, ai, ae/, all of which are clearly distinct in the speech of the TK and K groups, but which are tending to merge to three in the younger group, who no longer distinguish tae and tai or hau and hou so clearly. Within the T group, we distinguished between those who had been speaking Māori since birth (R1), and those who had acquired good Māori at school or later (R2). It turned out that in all the changes taking place, the R2-T group is leading the way, and is thus probably the direction the language will take into the future, particularly as the majority of younger speakers of Māori these days belong to this category.

Language, Ethnicity, and Belonging for the Children of Migrants in New Zealand

The children of migrants grow up with influence from at least two cultures, and they must negotiate their path to adulthood through one or more ethnicities and one or more language varieties that may set them apart from the majority population. We asked how teenagers born to migrant parents in an English-speaking context appeal to the cultures and/or ethnicities they identify with to explain their language choices and perceptions of belonging. More than 50 interviews were carried out with teenagers who identified as speakers of the minority language of their parents (Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Korean, or Spanish), and one or both parents of such young people. The focus of the interviews was the minority language, but they became narratives of belonging. Thematic analysis of the transcribed and (where necessary) translated interviews revealed patterns in the perceptions of the teens and their parents. The reported self-perceived proficiency of the teenagers in the minority language, their perception of their ethnicity (particularly but not exclusively for the Chinese and Korean teens) and the culture of the host country, diasporic, and home country communities- were factors in when and how the teens chose to use the minority language, and in how they identified as, for example, Dutch. More than 160 languages are spoken in New Zealand; 25% of the population was born elsewhere, yet the country is one of the most monolingual in the world. This study reveals tensions affecting the willingness of New Zealand–born young people to openly identify with their parents’ ethnicity and to use their languages. Lessons learned from those who raised bilingual children in New Zealand in the face of minimal official support and overwhelming pressure from English will be valuable to other parents and caregivers in New Zealand and elsewhere.

The journeys of besieged languageseds. by Delyn Day, Poia Rewi, and Rawinia Higgins (review)

The purpose of the volume is to “hear the voices from some of the languages that find themselves pushed to the peripheries and margins” (vii). As such, the book contains descriptions of fourteen languages, most of which are indigenous and endangered, that have been “besieged” by more dominant languages. Of particular interest to readers of this journal will be the four chapters that focus on languages of Oceania: Hawaiian, Tahitian, Māori, and Barngarla (an Australian aboriginal language). The other languages span the rest of the globe: Hebrew, Piedmontese, Romani, Kashubian, Kernewek (Cornish), Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Kalaallisut (Greenland), Cree, and Ojibway. The approach and focus of each chapter varies considerably, with some of the chapters written from the perspective of those involved at the grassroots as speakers of the languages concerned. This is the case for the Polynesian languages in this volume. Many of the chapters are based on presentations given at the Te Kura Roa Minority Language and Dialect conference held in Dunedin, New Zealand, in April 2015. Ch. 1 gives details about the genesis of the conference as part of the three-year Te Kura Roa project funded by Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga, New Zealand’s Māori Centre of Research Excellence. Co-led by professors Poia Rewi and Rawinia Higgins, the project focused on supporting the continuing revitalization of the Māori language by examining both the reasons for the success of community generated initiatives as well as the responsiveness of the state. The Te Kura Roa conference enabled those involved with Māori language revitalization to hear from and interact with international scholars and practitioners from other minority language situations and consider the similarities and differences in each language’s situation. Ch. 2 and 3, written by indigenous academics, are highly personal and powerful testimonies of the effects of language loss. In ch. 2, Lorena Fontaine and Brock Pitawanakwat from Canada each describe their own upbringing with Algonquian languages Cree and Ojibway, which were spoken by their grandparents but not passed on to younger generations. They speak eloquently of the resultant cultural loss. With regard to revitalization, Fontaine details the results of language surveys administered among 1,400 participants from the Opaskwayak Cree Nations in 2002 and 2013. These surveys revealed a rapid decline in speakers as well as a virtual loss of intergenerational transmission in the home; just three percent of respondents were speaking only Cree to their children. However, questions on attitudes revealed a very high level of appreciation of the Cree language as an important part of tribal identity. The results galvanized the community to start a pre-school language immersion program. Pitawanakwat outlines an initiative within the Anishinaabe (Ojibway) community to record oral stories in written form. He also notes a 2012 language survey that revealed that only eight percent were using Ojibway at home. These results motivated the Anishi-

Investigating the Sound Change in the New Zealand English Nurse Vowel /ᴈ:/

Although there have been many studies of New Zealand English (NZE) vowels, little has been written about the nurse vowel /ɜ:/. This study uses data from three groups of Māori speakers of NZE born between 1871 and 1992 to analyse changes to the nurse vowel over time. Although all these speakers are bilingual in English and Māori, we show that they are representative of NZE speakers generally. Analyses are carried out on formant frequency, vowel length, lip-rounding and vocal tract shape. The vowel space position measure (VSM) is used to analyse first and second formant movements together. The nurse vowel in NZE has risen so that it is now close and front in the vowel space, and apparently in danger of being confused with the goose vowel. We conclude by considering the factors that apparently keep the vowels apart and the potential effects of such a merger.