/u/ fronting and /t/ aspiration in Māori and New Zealand English
Citation
Export citationMaclagan, 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.
Permanent Research Commons link: https://hdl.handle.net/10289/3307
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/.
Date
2009Type
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Rights
This article has been published in the journal: Language Variation and Change. © 2009 Cambridge University Press.