/u/ fronting and /t/ aspiration in Mori 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 fromthe latter part of the nineteenth century.We report analyses of these developments for three groups ofmale speakers of Māori spanning the twentieth century.We compare theMāori 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/.