Abstract Reading Mr. Nils M. Holmer's article on stress in Maaori 1 Nils M. Holmer, “Notes on the system of stress in Maori”, Acta Linguistica Hafniensia IX, 2 (1966). it strikes me that his treatment is on some vital points almost identical with that adopted for Malagasy by Otto Chr. Dahl, 2 Otto Chr. Dahl, “Étude de phonologie et de phonetique Malgaches”, Norsk tidsskrift for sprogvidenskap XVI (1952). quoted by Mr. Holmer. Appropriate as this procedure may be for that language, it does not seem to me to ease the understanding of stress in Maaori. Quite to the contrary: Mr. Holmer's phonetic notation agrees very badly with any reasonable pronunciation of Maaori and at times seems very confusing. Mr. Holmer maintains that “an intimate relation exists between the system of stress and the system of vowel quantity”. 3 op. cit., p. 164. If the relation refers to lengthening of a vowel in stressed position, this is a. purely phonetic phenomenon without phonemic repercussions, since the relation short/long remains. There is no neutralisation of short and long vowel from lack of primary stress. Mr. Holmer's notion of vowel length only occasionally being noticeable and on the other hand stress being accessory to it (p. 171: “Stress is principally governed by the vowel quantity”) should be disproved by the following: /mótuu/ ‘piece of flesh’, /mótu/ ‘island’; /tóoηaa/ ‘secret’, /tóηa/ ‘south’. (Any examples from Maaori should really be heard in connected speech. When pronounced in isolation, they will usually be given final contour stress by the native speaker, and this will most likely confuse the linguist's perception of primary stress.) Primary stress serves mainly to mark out base morphemes, so it is right in a sense that it is “linked up with the division of a context into words”. As to difference in quality, not quantity, being the important factor, see Bruce Biggs, “The Structure of New Zealand Maaori”, Anthropological Linguistics 3,3 (1961), p. 12: “/ee/ is not noticeably different from /e/” (in quality). In fact such a relation exists for secondary and contour stress and probably for primary stress, but the rules of this relation are more complicated than Mr. Holmer's statement leads one to believe.