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/u/ fronting and /t/ aspiration in Māori and New Zealand English

Abstract
This article examines the relationship between the frontness of /u/ and the aspiration of /t/ in both Māori and New Zealand English (NZE). In both languages, these processes can be observed since the earliest recordings dating from the latter part of the nineteenth century. We report analyses of these developments for three groups of male speakers of Māori spanning the twentieth century. We compare the Māori analyses with analyses of related features of the speakers' English and of the English of monolingual contemporaries. The occurrence of these processes in Māori cannot be seen simply as interference from NZE as the Māori-speaking population became increasingly bilingual. We conclude that it was the arrival of English with its contrast between aspirated and unaspirated plosives, rather than direct borrowing, that was the trigger for the fronting of the hitherto stable back Māori /u/ vowel together with increased aspiration of /t/ before both /i/ and /u/.
Type
Journal Article
Type of thesis
Series
Citation
Maclagan, M., Watson, C. I., Harlow, R., King, J. & Keegan, P. (2009). /u/ fronting and /t/ aspiration in Māori and New Zealand English. Language Variation and Change, 21(2), 175-192.
Date
2009
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Degree
Supervisors
Rights
This article has been published in the journal: Language Variation and Change. © 2009 Cambridge University Press.