5. The changing sound of the Māori language
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Ray Harlow
Abstract
Māori is the indigenous language of New Zealand. Its increasingly close contact with English over the last 150 years led to its endangerment, though it is now subject to active revitalization efforts. This chapter reports on some results from the MAONZE (Māori and New Zealand English) Research Project, which is studying aspects of the mutual influence of Māori and English in the area of pronunciation. Three groups of male speakers are analyzed, with birth dates ranging over 100 years (1880s to 1980s). Acoustic analyses of vowels and diphthongs are presented together with analyses of the stop consonants and /f/ (<wh>). The results show that there has been considerable change in all the analyzed aspects of Māori pronunciation. Some changes could reflect languageinternal change, but since they relate closely to similar changes that have taken place in New Zealand English over the same time period, they probably also represent external influence.
Abstract
Māori is the indigenous language of New Zealand. Its increasingly close contact with English over the last 150 years led to its endangerment, though it is now subject to active revitalization efforts. This chapter reports on some results from the MAONZE (Māori and New Zealand English) Research Project, which is studying aspects of the mutual influence of Māori and English in the area of pronunciation. Three groups of male speakers are analyzed, with birth dates ranging over 100 years (1880s to 1980s). Acoustic analyses of vowels and diphthongs are presented together with analyses of the stop consonants and /f/ (<wh>). The results show that there has been considerable change in all the analyzed aspects of Māori pronunciation. Some changes could reflect languageinternal change, but since they relate closely to similar changes that have taken place in New Zealand English over the same time period, they probably also represent external influence.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
-
Introduction
- The lure of a distant horizon: Variation in indigenous minority languages 1
-
Part I. Variation in phonetics and phonology
- 1. The phonetic and phonological effects of obsolescence in Northern Paiute 23
- 2. Diglossia and monosyllabization in Eastern Cham: A sociolinguistic study 47
- 3. Affricates in Lleidatà: A sociophonetic case study 77
- 4. Sociolinguistic stratification and new dialect formation in a Canadian aboriginal community: Not so different after all? 109
- 5. The changing sound of the Māori language 129
- 6. Toward a study of language variation and change in Jonaz Chichimeco 153
- 7. A sociolinguistic sketch of vowel shifts in Kaqchikel: ATR-RTR parameters and redundancy markedness of syllabic nuclei in an Eastern Mayan language 173
- 8. Phonological features of attrition: The shift from Catalan to Spanish in Alicante 211
- 9. Sociophonetic variation in urban Ewe 229
- 10. Phonological variation in a Peruvian Quechua speech community 245
- 11. A tale of two diphthongs in an indigenous minority language: Yami of Taiwan 259
- 12. Phonological markedness, regional identity, and sex in Mayan: The fricativization of intervocalic /l/ 281
- 13. The pronunciation of /r/ in Frisian: A comparative study with Dutch and Town Frisian 299
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Part II. Variation in syntax, morphology, and morphophonology
- 14. Language shift among the Mansi 321
- 15. Fine-grained morphophonological variation in Scottish Gaelic: Evidence from the Linguistic Survey of Scotland 347
- 16. Animacy in Bislama? Using quantitative methods to evaluate transfer of a substrate feature 369
- 17. The challenges of less commonly studied languages: Writing a sociogrammar of Faetar 397
- 18. Language variation and change in a North Australian indigenous community 419
- 19. Ethnicity, bilingualism and variable clitic marking in Bishnupriya Manipuri 441
- 20. Clan as a sociolinguistic variable: Three approaches to Sui clans 463
- 21. Language loss in spatial semantics: Dene Sųłiné 485
- Index 517
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
-
Introduction
- The lure of a distant horizon: Variation in indigenous minority languages 1
-
Part I. Variation in phonetics and phonology
- 1. The phonetic and phonological effects of obsolescence in Northern Paiute 23
- 2. Diglossia and monosyllabization in Eastern Cham: A sociolinguistic study 47
- 3. Affricates in Lleidatà: A sociophonetic case study 77
- 4. Sociolinguistic stratification and new dialect formation in a Canadian aboriginal community: Not so different after all? 109
- 5. The changing sound of the Māori language 129
- 6. Toward a study of language variation and change in Jonaz Chichimeco 153
- 7. A sociolinguistic sketch of vowel shifts in Kaqchikel: ATR-RTR parameters and redundancy markedness of syllabic nuclei in an Eastern Mayan language 173
- 8. Phonological features of attrition: The shift from Catalan to Spanish in Alicante 211
- 9. Sociophonetic variation in urban Ewe 229
- 10. Phonological variation in a Peruvian Quechua speech community 245
- 11. A tale of two diphthongs in an indigenous minority language: Yami of Taiwan 259
- 12. Phonological markedness, regional identity, and sex in Mayan: The fricativization of intervocalic /l/ 281
- 13. The pronunciation of /r/ in Frisian: A comparative study with Dutch and Town Frisian 299
-
Part II. Variation in syntax, morphology, and morphophonology
- 14. Language shift among the Mansi 321
- 15. Fine-grained morphophonological variation in Scottish Gaelic: Evidence from the Linguistic Survey of Scotland 347
- 16. Animacy in Bislama? Using quantitative methods to evaluate transfer of a substrate feature 369
- 17. The challenges of less commonly studied languages: Writing a sociogrammar of Faetar 397
- 18. Language variation and change in a North Australian indigenous community 419
- 19. Ethnicity, bilingualism and variable clitic marking in Bishnupriya Manipuri 441
- 20. Clan as a sociolinguistic variable: Three approaches to Sui clans 463
- 21. Language loss in spatial semantics: Dene Sųłiné 485
- Index 517
