Cover not available

Article published In: Variation in the Pacific: Part II
Edited by Eri Kashima and Miriam Meyerhoff
[Asia-Pacific Language Variation 7:1] 2021
► pp. 62–81

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
authorization required

New Zealand English in Auckland

A Papatoetoe snapshot

 | The University of Auckland
 | The University of Auckland
 | The University of Auckland
Published online: 9 June 2021
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/aplv.19014.ros
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.
Abstract (Japanese)
本研究では、ニュージーランド・オークランドにあるパパトエトエという、主にパシフィカ系住民が居住している地域におけるニュージーランド英語話者の母音空間の音響分析を行う。パパトエトエの英語話者（n = 13)と主に非パシフィカ住民が多数を占める地域であるマウントロスキル(n = 14)およびティティランギ (n = 6)を比較した。参加者は全てニュージーランド英語話者で、年齢は１６歳から２５歳、男性と女性の参加者は同数であった。音響分析にはストレスのある母音を選び出し、母音のターゲットでフォルマントを計測した。本研究では8000以上の単母音と4000以上の2重母音を分析したが、その結果、地域間の差は見られなかったが、全てのグループの母音空間において、一般的なニュージーランド英語の母音空間との間で差が見られた。その差は以前のパシフィカニュージーランド英語に対する知見と一致している。本論文では、これらの結果がパシフィカニュージーランド英語とオークランドにおけるニュージーランド英語について何を示しているのを考察し、結論を述べる。
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Pasifika New Zealand English research
    • 2.1Auckland voices database
  • 3.Methodology
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Statistical analysis
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Limitations
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
References (37)
References
Auckland Council (2014). Ōtara-Papatoetoe local board profile – Initial results from the 2013 Census. Retrieved May 10, 2018, from [URL]
Bartlett, Christopher (1992). Regional variation in New Zealand English: The case of Southland. New Zealand English Newsletter, 61, 5–15. University of Canterbury.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bauer, Laurie (1979). The second Great Vowel Shift? Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 9(2), 57–66. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(1992). The second Great Vowel Shift revisited. English World-Wide, 13(2), 253–268. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(1994). English in New Zealand. In Robert Burchfield (Ed.), The Cambridge history of the English language, volume 51, (pp. 382–429). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bell, Allan, & Gibson, Andy (2008). Stopping and fronting in New Zealand Pasifika English. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics, 14(2), 44–53.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cheshire, Jenny, Fox, Susan, Kerswill, Paul, & Torgerson, Eivind (2013). Language contact and language change in the multicultural metropolis. Revue Française de Linguistique Appliquée, 17(2), 63–76. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Docherty, Gerard, Langstrof, Christian, & Foulkes, Paul (2013). Listener evaluation of sociophonetic variability: Probing constraints and capabilities. Linguistics, 51(2), 355–380. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gibson, Andy, & Bell, Allan (2010). Performing Pasifika English in New Zealand: The case of bro’Town. English World-Wide, 31(3), 231–251. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Harrington, Jonathan (2010). Phonetic analysis of speech corpora. United Kingdom: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Holmes, J., Bell, A., & Boyce, M. (1991). Variation and change in New Zealand English: A social dialect study. Project Report to the Social Sciences Committee of the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology. Wellington: Victoria University of Wellington.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kisler, Thomas, Reichel, Uwe, & Schiel, Florian (2017). Multilingual processing of speech via web services. Computer Speech and Language, 451, 326–347. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Maclagan, Margaret, & Hay, Jennifer (2007). Getting fed up with our feet: Contrast maintenance and the New Zealand English “short” front vowel shift. Language Variation and Change, 19 (1), 1–25. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Meyerhoff, Miriam, Birchfield, Alexandra, Ballard, Elaine, Charters, Helen, & Watson, Catherine (2020). Definite change taking place: Determiner realization in multiethnic communities in New Zealand. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics, 25(2), 9.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pinheiro, J., Bates, D., DebRoy, S., Sarkar, D., & R Core Team (2018). nlme: Linear and nonlinear mixed effects models. R package version 3.1–13. Retrieved from [URL]
(2013). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. Retrieved from [URL]
Ross, Brooke (2018). An acoustic analysis of New Zealand English vowels in Auckland. Master’s thesis, Victoria University of Wellington. Retrieved from [URL]
Sloetjes, Han, & Wittenburg, Peter (2008). Annotation by category – ELAN and ISO DCR. Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2008).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Starks, Donna, Christie, Jane, & Thompson, Laura (2007). Niuean English: Initial insights into an emerging variety. English World-Wide, 28(2), 133–146. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Starks, Donna, Gibson, Andy, & Bell, Allan (2015). Pasifika Englishes in New Zealand. In Jeffrey P. Williams, Edgar W. Schneider, Peter Trudgill, & Daniel Schreier (Eds.), Further studies in the lesser known varieties of English (pp. 288–304). Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Starks, Donna, & Reffell, Hayley (2005). Pronouncing your Rs in New Zealand English? A study of Pasifika and Maori students. New Zealand English Journal, 191, 36–48.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stats NZ (2018a). Place Summaries | Auckland Region | Stats NZ. Stats NZ. [URL]
(2018b). Place Summaries | Ōtara-Papatoetoe Local Board Area | Stats NZ. Stats NZ. [URL]
Taumoefolau, Melenaite, Starks, Donna, Davis, Karen, & Bell, Allan (2002). Linguists and language maintenance: Pasifika languages in Manukau, New Zealand. Oceanic Linguistics, 41(1), 15–27. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Thompson, Laura, Watson, Catherine I., & Starks, Donna (2009). Finding one’s own vowel space. In Thomas Hoffmann & Lucia Siebers, (Eds.), Problems, properties and prospects: Selected Papers from the 13th IAWE Conference, volume 401 (pp. 125–140). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Trudgill, Peter, Gordon, Elizabeth, & Lewis, Gillian (1998). New-dialect formation and Southern Hemisphere English: The New Zealand short front vowels. Journal of Sociolinguistics 2(1), 35–51. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vorperian, Houri K., & Kent, Ray D. (2007). Vowel acoustic space development in children: A synthesis of acoustic and anatomic data. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 50(6), 1510–1545. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Warren, Paul (2017). Quality and quantity in New Zealand English vowel contrasts. Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 48(3), 305–330. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Watson, Catherine I., Harrington, J., & Evans, Zoe (1998). An acoustic comparison between New Zealand and Australian English vowels. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 18(2), 187–287. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Watson, Catherine I., Maclagan, Margaret, & Harrington, Jonathan (2000). Acoustic evidence for vowel change in New Zealand English. Language Variation and Change, 12(1), 51–68. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Watson, Catherine I., Palethorpe, Sallyanne, & Harrington, Jonathan (2004). Capturing the vowel change in New Zealand English over a thirty year period via a diachronic study. Proceedings of the 10th Australian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology, 18(2), 201–206.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wells, John C. (1982). Accents of English: Beyond the British Isles, volume 31. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wiese, Heike (2013). What can new urban dialects tell us about internal language dynamics? The power of language diversity. Linguistische Berichte, 191, 207–245.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Winkelmann, Raphael, Harrington, Jonathan, & Jänsch, Klaus (2017). EMU-SDMS: Advanced speech database management and analysis in R. Computer Speech and Language, 451, 392–410. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Winkelmann, Raphael, & Raess, Georg (2014). Introducing a web application for labeling, visualizing speech and correcting derived speech signals. Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), 4129–4133.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (4)

Cited by four other publications

Ballard, Elaine, Helen Charters, Miriam Meyerhoff & Catherine Watson
2025. New Zealand, Multicultural Auckland English. In The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of World Englishes, ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Cheng, Andrew, Lauretta Cheng, Wilkinson Daniel Wong Gonzales & Pocholo Umbal
2024. Variation in Asian and Pacific Islander North American English. Asia-Pacific Language Variation 10:1 ► pp. 67 ff. DOI logo
Degani, Marta & Alexander Onysko
2024. Cultural variation in New Zealand English stories about place. World Englishes 43:3 ► pp. 399 ff. DOI logo
Penney, Joshua & Anita Szakay
2024. Ladz in the Hood: Features of Pasifika English in Drill Rappers from Western Sydney. Languages 9:3 ► pp. 79 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 1 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue