New Zealand English Research Articles

Māori loanwords in New Zealand English

Abstract The Indigenous language of ANZ, Māori is undergoing significant revitalisation, following severe loss of vitality caused by English colonialism. One dimension to this revitalisation is the normalising of borrowings from Māori into New Zealand English (NZE). However, there are currently no empirical studies of adults’ naming patterns for concepts that can be lexicalised by Māori words in NZE. We report on a picture-naming experiment in which 48 participants are asked to name a set of target and control pictures depicting everyday concepts from three semantic categories which involve Māori borrowings: flora/fauna, people/places, material culture. Following a background questionnaire, we group participants into three categories, depending on their orientation towards Māori language and culture. Results suggest a clear association between participant orientation and their use of Māori loanwords. Alternative interpretations are discussed, including questions for future research on the relationship between NZE lexical variation and language planning.

Performance of single-channel speech enhancement algorithms on Mandarin listeners with different immersion conditions in New Zealand English

Speech enhancement (SE) is a widely used technology to improve the quality and intelligibility of noisy speech. So far, SE algorithms were designed and evaluated on native listeners only, but not on non-native listeners who are known to be more disadvantaged when listening in noisy environments. This paper investigates the performance of five widely used single-channel SE algorithms on early-immersed New Zealand English (NZE) listeners and native Mandarin listeners with different immersion conditions in NZE under negative input signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) by conducting a subjective listening test in NZE sentences. The performance of the SE algorithms in terms of speech intelligibility in the three participant groups was investigated. The result showed that the early-immersed group always achieved the highest intelligibility. The late-immersed group outperformed the non-immersed group for higher input SNR conditions, possibly due to the increasing familiarity with the NZE accent, whereas this advantage disappeared at the lowest tested input SNR conditions. The SE algorithms tested in this study failed to improve and rather degraded the speech intelligibility, indicating that these SE algorithms may not be able to reduce the perception gap between early-, late- and non-immersed listeners, nor able to improve the speech intelligibility under negative input SNR in general. These findings have implications for the future development of SE algorithms tailored to Mandarin listeners, and for understanding the impact of language immersion on speech perception in noise.

Focussing and Levelling in the Auckland Voices Project

Levelling and focussing are well-documented processes, central to the emergence of new dialects, including to the emergence of New Zealand English as a distinct variety in the last hundred and fifty years. We draw on recent recordings from three areas in Auckland to examine the extent to which levelling and focussing continue to be relevant today. Most work on NZ English as a new dialect has concentrated on phonology; we extend the analysis to syntax. We consider the structure of relative clauses used in communities which have very different demographic profiles and histories of immigration. We find evidence that levelling and focussing continue to underpin the development of post-colonial English in New Zealand. Our data suggests that speakers draw on linguistically motivated solutions to the choice among variants when focussing occurs.

Language learning environments for Arabic-speaking children in New Zealand: Family demographics and children’s Arabic language exposure

ABSTRACT The language-learning environments of children growing up bilingual are highly variable. For speech and language therapists (SLTs), understanding the features of these environments can enhance the quality of services. In New Zealand (NZ), the language learning environments for children in Arabic-speaking families are largely unresearched. Participants from 85 Arabic-speaking families living in NZ completed an online survey (with each participant representing one family). The survey collected information about some of the factors which are known to affect children’s bilingual language development. Analysis focused on education levels, parents’ language proficiencies, years in NZ, and language exposure. The Arabic-speaking population in this survey provided a high proficiency Arabic language-learning environment for their children. They had higher than average education levels and reported greater proficiency in Arabic than English. English proficiency in the parents was associated with education levels and length of time in NZ. Exposure to Arabic was predominantly within the home context. The consistent use of Arabic at home combined with a lack of formal teaching of Arabic literacy suggests that these children will be able to speak Arabic but may exhibit limited ability to read and write in Arabic. This information on a sample of Arabic families in NZ may be useful for service and educational planning purposes. SLTs are advised to investigate the individual linguistic environments of children growing up bilingual in Arabic and English in NZ as part of their practice.

Pop Song English as a supralocal norm

AbstractAn American-influenced singing accent, referred to here as Pop Song English (PSE), is common in popular music throughout (and beyond) the Anglophone world. This article presents an analysis of the sung pronunciation of two variables (bath and nonprevocalic /r/) that distinguish New Zealand English (NZE) from American Englishes (AmE). The Phonetics of Popular Song (PoPS) corpus includes 154 performers, structured according to country of origin (NZ and the US) and musical genre (pop and hip hop). An auditory analysis was conducted for each variable, distinguishing between the NZE and PSE/AmE variants. Almost all New Zealand performers adopt the PSE variants at least some of the time, with greater adherence to the American model in pop than in hip hop. In the US, region determines hip hop, but not pop, artists’ degree of rhoticity. PSE represents a supralocal norm for pop music, while hip hop artists tend to use their ‘own accent’. (Pop Song English, singing accent, rap accent, supralocal norm, nonprevocalic /r/, trap–bath split, intentionality, language performance, pop music, hip hop, responsive style, initiative style)*

When loanwords are not lone words

Abstract Networks are being used to model an increasingly diverse range of real-world phenomena. This paper introduces an exploratory approach to studying loanwords in relation to one another, using networks of co-occurrence. While traditional studies treat individual loanwords as discrete items, we show that insights can be gained by focusing on the various loanwords that co-occur within each text in a corpus, especially when leveraging the notion of a hypergraph. Our research involves a case-study of New Zealand English (NZE), which borrows Indigenous Māori words on a large scale. We use a topic-constrained corpus to show that: (i) Māori loanword types tend not to occur by themselves in a text; (ii) infrequent loanwords are nearly always accompanied by frequent loanwords; and (iii) it is not uncommon for texts to contain a mixture of listed and unlisted loanwords, suggesting that NZE is still riding a wave of borrowing importation from Māori.

Attitudes of Slovene L2 Speakers of English to Six Native Varieties of English

The paper presents the results of an experiment whose purpose was to study the attitudes towards six L1 varieties of English by Slovene students of English. Using the verbal guise test, the participants were exposed to audio clips of Received Pronunciation (RP), General American (GA), Scottish English (ScE), Irish English (IrE), Australian English (AusE) and New Zealand English (NZE). They were required to complete a two-part questionnaire. In part one, they were asked to rate, on four-point Likert scale, statements about the cognitive, affective and aesthetic traits of the speakers, as well as the linguistic traits which they believed contributed most to their attitudes to a particular variety. In part two, they had to rank the six tested varieties indicating their general order of preference, their relative familiarity with the varieties and the appropriateness of the varieties for teaching to Slovene learners of English. The results of the study confirm the findings of numerous other similar studies in giving preference to the two best-known global standard varieties (RP and GA) over the other varieties.

Using principal component analysis to explore co‐variation of vowels

AbstractThis paper presents a methodology for exploring systematic co‐variation of vowels using Principal Component Analysis (PCA). As a case study, we examine and build on Brand et al.'s (2021) study of systematic co‐variation amongst the monophthongs of New Zealand English (NZE) across speakers born over a 118‐year time period. We present PCA as a methodology, with information aimed at readers who may themselves want to use it in a related context. We consider tests for the appropriateness of PCA, how to select Principal Components, and how to interpret them once they have been found. At each stage, we provide code in the R programing language to enable readers to both follow our analysis and apply the same methods to their own data.

Parliamentary Hansard records and epicentral influence in Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea

AbstractThis paper investigates the possibility of epicentral influence from two endonormative varieties of English – Australian English (AusE) and New Zealand English (NZE) – on a norm‐developing variety, Papua New Guinean English (PNGE). Through a keyword analysis of recent parliamentary Hansard data, we are able to identify some structural language features that distinguish the Pacific varieties from British English (BrE) – the use of got, going (to) and choice of pronoun case. While each of these features showed the Pacific varieties to have shared usage patterns that distinguished them from BrE, a diachronic analysis of them for AusE and NZE did not produce clear patterns from which a source of epicentral influence could be identified. Further study, with more detailed diachronic data, could well prove useful in explaining current trends and identifying whether AusE or NZE act as epicentres within the Pacific region.

Differences between listeners with early and late immersion age in spatial release from masking in various acoustic environments

It is well-known that we benefit from binaural hearing when listening to the speech of interest amongst noise, where spatial cues may release our auditory perception from masking. However, this benefit deteriorates with external factors such as the reverberation in the room, as well as internal factors such as our familiarity with the language of interest. The current study examined spatial release from masking (SRM) experienced by listeners with different age of immersion to New Zealand English (NZE) in varying room acoustics. A speech intelligibility test was conducted using an Ambisonic-based sound reproduction system to reproduce speech and noise as if they were produced in a seminar room and a chapel at two distances between the source and the listener: 2 m and 5 m. The rooms differed in reverberation time (RT), and the distances modified the speech clarity (C50). The participants were split into an early immersed group (n= 20), and a late immersed group (n= 37), where the participants in the early immersed group were immersed in NZE before the age of 13, and those in the late immersed group were immersed after the age of 15. A babble noise was played from eight azimuthal angles (0, ±45∘, ±90∘, ±135∘, 180∘) while the target speech, which was sentences from the Bamford–Kowal–Bench (BKB) corpus, was played from 0∘. Early immersed listeners were able to understand speech better than late immersed listeners within most of the room acoustics tested. However, once the room acoustics caused too adverse listening conditions at a high RT and low C50, neither group could benefit from SRM. The early immersed group was also able to make use of spatial cues to benefit from SRM more than the late immersed group, even in the least reverberant room scenario in the current study. Finally, while room acoustics affected how the groups benefitted from SRM, this effect was only observed when the source was located 5 m from the listener.

Extralinguistic features of the development of modern English in New Zealand

The purpose of the study is to determine the trends of linguistic development in the territory of the New Zealand region within the framework of the redistribution of ethnosociogroups, as well as to assess the linguistic prospects of the southern and northern island parts in a comparative analysis. The article reveals the main extralinguistic factors influencing the linguistic space of the south and north of New Zealand, which provoke evolutionary linguistic shifts with the formation of new variations of the language. The most important comparative characteristics of ethnolinguistic groups are identified and described on the basis of a statistical assessment of their redistribution over the past few years, taking into account covid realities. The subject of the study is the New Zealand language space at the present stage of development. The scientific novelty of the study is to present the current language situation in New Zealand based on a comparison of the changing ethnic and sociolinguistic conjuncture of the southern and northern islands. Official statistical data on the New Zealand region, as well as a socio-ethnic atlas with forecasting up to and including 2038, were used as materials. The study provides a justification for the linguistic shift in the territory of New Zealand, and also presents a summary table of comparative data on the ethnic composition and linguistic groups of the southern and northern regions with an assessment of possible scenarios for future language development in the context of ethnosociolinguistics.

What is English? Understanding how subject English is framed in The New Zealand Curriculum

Since its emergence as a distinct subject area in the nineteenth century, English has been an important, but contested, subject. Competing discourses, resulting in different models of English, have vied for prominence, each with ideologies about the purposes of education and the needs of students and the state. However, while international research into subject English is plentiful, little has been written about the current state of subject English in New Zealand. Using content analysis and critical discourse analysis this article examines senior subject English in the New Zealand Curriculum. The results reveal that while subject English in New Zealand retains progressive features, it has been colonised by neoliberal educational discourses. This article argues that the results of these discourses include the commodification of learning, the entrenching of inequalities, and the reframing of teachers as mere technicians. While senior subject English in the New Zealand Curriculum is examined here, the results have implications across the curriculum, particularly in light of the NCEA review which began in 2018 and will result in changes from 2024.

A cross‐linguistic study of spatial location descriptions in New Zealand English and Brazilian Portuguese natural language

AbstractHumans use spatial language on a daily basis, to describe locations, give directions, and ask for information about places. Better understanding of spatial language can assist in developing natural language interfaces and querying tools for GIS and web mapping. However, most previous studies focus on artificial, indoor situations. We conduct cross‐linguistic experiments to compare natural language relative location descriptions (e.g., the house beside the river) in New Zealand English (NZE) and Brazilian Portuguese (BP) using eight real outdoor locations to discover the differences that occur when people describe the same location in the two languages. Our results show that NZE uses a wider range of spatial relation terms (e.g., beside) and reference objects (e.g., river) than BP, that BP uses more projective spatial relation terms than NZE, which prefers directional terms, and that translation between spatial relation terms is context‐dependent.

New Zealand English in Auckland

Abstract This study acoustically analyses the vowel space of adult New Zealand English speakers from a predominantly Pasifika suburb in Auckland (Papatoetoe). These speakers (n = 13) are compared to two equivalent groups from non-Pasifika Auckland suburbs, Mount Roskill (n = 14) and Titirangi (n = 6). All participants are New Zealand English speakers aged 16–25. There were equal numbers of male and female participants. For the acoustic analysis vowels with sentence stress were identified and extracted and formant values were calculated at the vowel target. This study looks at over 8000 monophthongs and 4000 diphthongs. The study found minimal differences between speakers from different suburbs, but all groups had notable differences from the traditional New Zealand English (NZE) vowel space. These differences align with previous comments regarding the vowels of Pasifika New Zealand English. The paper concludes by contemplating what these results say about Pasifika New Zealand English and New Zealand English in Auckland.

Learnification and the outcomes‐focused curriculum: The case of secondary school English in Aotearoa New Zealand

AbstractThe last 30 years have witnessed a global ‘curricular turn’, with curricula increasingly moving from specifying particular content to specifying broad, skill‐based ‘learning objectives’. This paper explores the implications of this curricular turn through a critical assessment of the current state of secondary school English in Aotearoa New Zealand. This is achieved through a critical discourse analysis of key curricular and assessment documents and a series of semi‐structured interviews with English teachers. Biesta's concept of ‘learnification’, which captures how contemporary schooling can focus on learning in a way which can obscure important questions of what students are learning and why, is used as a lens through which to analyse this data. The paper argues that secondary school English in New Zealand is highly ‘learnified’, that is, both official documents and teachers are concerned above all else with ensuring ‘learning’ is happening and ‘learning objectives’ are being met, rather than with bigger questions of purpose. This problematically decreases the opportunity for what Biesta calls a ‘pedagogy of interruption’: the opportunity for curricular encounters to challenge and extend students’ horizons.

Concurrent validity of the Preschool Early Literacy Indicators with a New Zealand sample of 5-year-olds entering primary school

ABSTRACT We examined the concurrent validity of the Preschool Early Literacy Indicators (PELI®) with 105 New Zealand (NZ) five-year-old children entering primary school. PELI® incorporates oral language and emergent literacy tasks into a picture-book that is administered as a shared adult–child read-aloud activity. In this study, PELI® administration and scoring was adapted to NZ English. Correlations and hierarchical linear regression analyses were conducted to assess the correspondence of PELI®NZ tasks with criterion measures assessing related constructs (oral language: Clinical Evaluations of Language Fundamentals-Preschool Second Edition, Australia & New Zealand Standardized Edition; alphabet knowledge: Letter Naming Fluency). Diagnostic accuracy of the PELI®NZ language index composite and phonological awareness scores was evaluated using logistic regression and area under the curve (ROC). Results supported concurrent validity of the PELI®NZ in this NZ sample. Future research should evaluate whether children’s performance on PELI®NZ at school entry predicts later progress in literacy acquisition.

A subtitling stalemate

Abstract The Dark Horse (2014) is a highly successful New Zealand film that exemplifies a strong multilingual and multicultural landscape where the Māori language and cultural concepts, as well as specific examples of New Zealand English co-exist within the one film. This linguistic and cultural complexity is a key part to the film, therefore retaining this in a translation becomes a challenging responsibility for the subtitler. This article first introduces the restrictions and intricacies of subtitling in general, and then analyses specific scenes from the commercial Italian subtitled version of The Dark Horse, highlighting the translation choices made by the subtitler when confronted with challenges pertaining to scenes involving multilingualism (in the form of English and Māori), culturally specific terminology (the use of New Zealand English idioms), as well as the representation of register for children from low socio-economic backgrounds. Alternative subtitles are proposed that seek to better represent the richness of the source text’s language and cultural references.

Correction to: Assessment by Comparative Judgement: An Application to Secondary Statistics and English in New Zealand

This correction has been initiated as incorrect version of the article and vendor overlooking several errors was published. The original article has been thus updated with the correct version.

Assessment by Comparative Judgement: An Application to Secondary Statistics and English in New Zealand

There is growing interest in using comparative judgement to assess student work as an alternative to traditional marking. Comparative judgement requires no rubrics and is instead grounded in experts making pairwise judgements about the relative ‘quality’ of students’ work according to a high level criterion. The resulting decision data are fitted to a statistical model to produce a score for each student. Cited benefits of comparative judgement over traditional methods include increased reliability, validity and efficiency of assessment processes. We investigated whether such claims apply to summative statistics and English assessments in New Zealand. Experts comparatively judged students’ responses to two national assessment tasks, and the reliability and validity of the outcomes were explored using standard techniques. We present evidence that the comparative judgement process efficiently produced reliable and valid assessment outcomes. We consider the limitations of the study, and make suggestions for further research and potential applications.

South African English, social inclusion and identity integration in New Zealand

AbstractA few months before immigrating to New Zealand, an Afrikaans‐English bilingual woman was interviewed in South Africa about her expectations of her sociolinguistic life in her new country. Fifteen years later she was interviewed again, in New Zealand. This article tells the story of her pre‐departure expectations and desires, and her retrospective meaning making of the experiences she had lived since her arrival in New Zealand. This longitudinal narrative study focuses on her use of South African English in the host country, particularly in the community and the workplace, and pays attention to its reception by others in these contexts. The study draws on a cognitive‐developmental model of identity integration to frame the analysis of interview data from a narrative perspective. It does so by using short story analysis (Barkhuizen, 2016). Short stories are extracts of interview data in story form and are analyzed for their content and varying scales of context. Three short stories are analyzed in this article. They show how the participant's English is used and received in New Zealand and what effect this has on her life and identity as an immigrant in the country over time.