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Most work on linking and intrusive M is conducted within the context of theoretical model building. This paper contributes some empirical data on the phenomenon by conducting the first large-scale acoustic analysis on the production of linking and intrusiveM in spontaneous speech. We analyze linking and intrusive /r/ in the speech of New Zealanders born between 1900 and 1935 -- a period during which New Zealand English had recently become reliably non-rhotic, and the system of linking and intrusive M was newly emergent. The acoustic analysis shows that the more often a speaker tends to produce linking //·/, the lower the /r/F3 tends to be. That is, across speakers, there is a robust correlation between the frequency of use of/r/, and the degree of constriction used. Consideration of the distributional patterns of words reveals that words which more often tend to occur before vowels are more likely to be produced with M in linking environments. This suggests that the pattern of contexts in which we experience a word is stored in a way that affects the word's subsequent production. Moreover, the F3 of the /r/s appearing in these words which tend to be pre-vocalic are significantly lower. There is thus a relationship between frequency of use and degree, both when considered across speakers and across words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In examining and attempting to describe the phenomena of language change, we have traditionally been faced with an enforced choice between internal and external explanations (see, for example, Labor 1972; Ross 1996). Recent research has begun to cast doubt upon this dichotomy to the extent that some now believe that the position that an external cause excludes an internal one (or vice versa) is untenable (Thomason and Kaufman 1988; Romaine 1995; Ross 1996). However, while research has now questioned the divide and has suggested that both internal and external factors may play a part in any single linguistic shift, we are still a long way from understanding how these dimensions interact in the mechanism of language change. This paper begins by providing a critical discussion of the internal versus external dichotomy and proceeds to present a case study of a sound change that reveals the intersection of system-internal and language-external forces. Specifically, the paper presents an intergenerational analysis of the shift in the MOUTH diphthong in New Zealand English. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This variational pragmatic study investigates the realisation of apologies in local council meetings in New Zealand and Britain. Specifically, it aims to establish to what extent the macro-social factors gender and region influence the choice and combination of apology strategies. The data are drawn from two multi-modal corpora, The Corpus of Australian and New Zealand Spoken English (CoANZSE) and The Corpus of British Isles Spoken English (CoBISE). Our findings reveal general shared trends both across the two regional varieties and the two gender groups. Apologies are mostly realised by sorry forms and speakers prefer to use just one single apology strategy. Nevertheless, within these general trends, some distinct gender patterns are manifest. Overall, though, our findings indicate that the influence of gender and region on the realisation of apologies is limited. The communicative setting of council meetings seems to exert a bigger impact on the apology behaviour of the councillors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the changes in the phrasal lexicon of Māori, the indigenous language of New Zealand, with the passage of time. It is stated that has been in Māori has been in contact with English language for nearly 150 years; and during this period, several changes have been seen in the pronunciation, grammar and lexicon of Māori.

This article considers the exemplar theories which are independently developing in phonetics and in syntax, and argues that they jointly make some predictions that neither does alone. One of these predictions is explored in the context of two sound changes which occurred in the history of New Zealand English. We show that both of these phonetic changes were affected by phrase-level factors. The raising of /ae/ was more advanced in the word hand when it referred to a limb, than when used in phrases such as give a hand or lend a hand. And the centralization of the // vowel was more advanced in utterances of give involving abstract themes (give a chance), than when it had a meaning of transfer of possession (give a pen). We argue that existence of such effects lends support both to the idea (from syntactic exemplar theory) that phrases are stored, and the idea (from phonetic exemplar theory) that lexical representations are phonetically detailed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]