Abstract
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.
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