Proceedings of the 2004 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society 1 Acoustic Analysis of Mäori: Historical Data MARGARET MACLAGAN 1 , RAY HARLOW 2 , JEANETTE KING 1 , PETER KEEGAN 3 , CATHERINE WATSON 3 . 1 University of Canterbury, 2 University of Waikato, 3 University of Auckland margaret.maclagan@canterbury.ac.nz rharlow@waikato.ac.nz j.king@canterbury.ac.nz p.keegan@auckland.ac.nz c.watson@auckland.ac.nz 1. Introduction Mäori has been spoken in New Zealand since Mäori settled the country some 800 to 1000 years ago (see papers in Sutton 1994). There has been interaction between Mäori and English speakers since the late 18 th century when, following Cook’s voyages, sealers and whalers visited the country as part of their hunting expeditions. From the 1820s, the Christian missions particularly, but also the establishment of British rule in the 1840s, greatly increased the contact between the two languages, and this interaction intensified during the second half of the 19 th century when many Mäori received schooling in English. Well into the first half of the 20 th century, virtually all Mäori still spoke the language, with many being bilingual in English and Mäori. Between the 1950s and 1980s, an urban drift by Mäori led to a dramatic shift to English so that most young Mäori spoke only English. Good summaries of the situation of Mäori in recent decades can be found in Fishman’s chapter on the language in Reversing Language Shift (1991: 230-51) and the Bentons’ chapter in the sequel to this volume (Benton & Benton 2001). During the 1970s, surveys found that the number of fluent speakers of Mäori had declined dramatically. There were some 60,000 native speakers at that stage, though the great majority were older people (Benton 1991: 17). This discovery was an important trigger for the major revitalization effort which has been taking place since the 1980s. As a result of this, many younger Mäori are now fluent L2 speakers, having learnt English as their first language. More recent studies including the 1996 and 2001 censuses, which for the first time included a language question, confirm that the older generation of speakers has indeed declined in number, while total numbers of speakers (including L2 speakers) has risen (Te Puni Kokiri 2003: 25). It is hoped and anticipated that these young speakers will raise children for whom Mäori is their first language. This will potentially lead to changes in the pronunciation of Mäori, because of the influence of English. There is very little historical information about the pronunciation of Mäori (see Bauer 1993; Biggs 1961; Harlow 2001 for descriptions of modern Mäori pronunciation) and changes that have occurred because of the influence of English have not been documented at all systematically. While lexical borrowing is well documented, there is at best only the occasional anecdotal remark on the influence of English on Mäori pronunciation (see for instance Benton 1991: 15; Harlow 1991:33-4). This paper seeks to provide a first step in documenting changes in the pronunciation of Mäori since its contact with English by