title: Motive and right action

authors: van Zyl, Liezl

subjects: motive

abstract: Some philosophers believe that a change in motive alone is sometimes sufficient to bring about a change in the deontic status (rightness or wrongness) of an action. I refer to this position as ‘weak motivism’, and distinguish it from ‘strong’ and ‘partial motivism’. I examine a number of cases where our intuitive judgements appear to support the weak motivist’s thesis, and argue that in each case an alternative explanation can be given for why a change in motive brings about (or, in some cases, appears to bring about) a change in deontic status.

text: Motive and right action Some philosophers believe that a change in motive alone is sometimes sufficient to bring about a change in the deontic status (rightness or wrongness) of an action. I refer to this position as ‘weak motivism’, and distinguish it from ‘strong’ and ‘partial motivism’. I examine a number of cases where our intuitive judgements appear to support the weak motivist’s thesis, and argue that in each case an alternative explanation can be given for why a change in motive brings about (or, in some cases, appears to bring about) a change in deontic status.

year: 2010

title: The Goldsworthy brothers (and James Gribble, a brother-in-law): prominent Hauraki miners

authors: Hart, Philip

abstract: This paper gives a basically chronological account of the lives of five prominent miners, all born into mining families. Most began their mining on the Thames field, becoming mine managers and even company directors. Some were involved with the Te Aroha rush, and all worked on the Waiorongomai field. They would mine throughout most of Hauraki into the early twentieth century, usually separately from their brothers or brother-in-law but sometimes with the latter. Because of their positions, most opposed the miners’ union’s desire for increased wages. Their personal finances were usually comfortable, although as this could not be guaranteed four out of the five also farmed to a greater or lesser extent. In their earlier days most were active sportsmen, but in the long term mining affected their health, one dying of miner’s complaint as a direct consequence of his chosen career.

text: The Goldsworthy brothers (and James Gribble, a brother-in-law): prominent Hauraki miners This paper gives a basically chronological account of the lives of five prominent miners, all born into mining families. Most began their mining on the Thames field, becoming mine managers and even company directors. Some were involved with the Te Aroha rush, and all worked on the Waiorongomai field. They would mine throughout most of Hauraki into the early twentieth century, usually separately from their brothers or brother-in-law but sometimes with the latter. Because of their positions, most opposed the miners’ union’s desire for increased wages. Their personal finances were usually comfortable, although as this could not be guaranteed four out of the five also farmed to a greater or lesser extent. In their earlier days most were active sportsmen, but in the long term mining affected their health, one dying of miner’s complaint as a direct consequence of his chosen career.

year: 2016

title: When your maunga is a mountain but your moana is not a sea; Insights from the perception of synonymy of te reo Māori loanwords and New Zealand English lexical equivalents

authors: Pohl, Alexander

abstract: Languages and their speakers are in ongoing contact with one another, which inevitably leads to a flow of words being borrowed from one language into another (Haspelmath 2009; Winford 2010). One perspective that has comparatively seen less attention in language contact research concerns how loanword relate to existing lexical alternatives. In recent years, language contact research has thus seen a paradigm shift towards an onomasiological perspective (see Anderson et al. 2017; Crombez et al. 2022; Zenner et al. 2023). Within this shift, most studies looking at lexical variation between loanwords and their near synonyms equivalents employ corpus linguistics methods (e.g. Onysko & WinterFroemel 2011; Soares da Silva 2013). 

This project presents a large-scale experimental approach from a case-study involving Māori loanwords borrowed into New Zealand English (NZE). Māori loanwords are ubiquitous, salient and probably still increasing within the NZE lexicon (Macalister 2007; Trye et al. 2019). Regarding onomasiology, Māori loanwords have been glossed and explained in different ways, and to date, there has been to our knowledge almost no research focused specifically on the relationship between loanwords and their near synonyms. 

Here, we report on a Qualtrics experiment devised to probe the perceived relationship between 60 Māori loanwords (spanning established semantic categories: flora and fauna, material culture, and social culture) and their NZE equivalents, as ascertained from published sources. The synonymy judgments were elicited for pairs (e.g. whānau – family), using an analogue slider (ranging from 0 = non-synonymous to 100 = fully synonymous; see Figure 1). Because synonymy judgements are subjective, we also included ten fillers, to help us calibrate and interpret participant judgements. The 60 words were divided into two-word lists in order avoid fatigue, resulting in a within participant design. The target demographic for our population of interest consisted of young adults (18-24 years). 

Following cleaning and exclusions (e.g. participants who ignored filler items), the final dataset contained 260 participants. Inspecting the dataset showed a skew towards female participants, and for this reason, we focus our statistical analysis on this core sample, while keeping an eye on the full dataset containing all participants. Preliminary findings suggest that young adults think Māori loanwords are (highly) synonymous with NZE lexical alternatives. These findings will be further scrutinised with regression techniques and qualitative analyses of the comments provided in an open answer section of the questionnaire.

text: When your maunga is a mountain but your moana is not a sea; Insights from the perception of synonymy of te reo Māori loanwords and New Zealand English lexical equivalents Languages and their speakers are in ongoing contact with one another, which inevitably leads to a flow of words being borrowed from one language into another (Haspelmath 2009; Winford 2010). One perspective that has comparatively seen less attention in language contact research concerns how loanword relate to existing lexical alternatives. In recent years, language contact research has thus seen a paradigm shift towards an onomasiological perspective (see Anderson et al. 2017; Crombez et al. 2022; Zenner et al. 2023). Within this shift, most studies looking at lexical variation between loanwords and their near synonyms equivalents employ corpus linguistics methods (e.g. Onysko & WinterFroemel 2011; Soares da Silva 2013). 

This project presents a large-scale experimental approach from a case-study involving Māori loanwords borrowed into New Zealand English (NZE). Māori loanwords are ubiquitous, salient and probably still increasing within the NZE lexicon (Macalister 2007; Trye et al. 2019). Regarding onomasiology, Māori loanwords have been glossed and explained in different ways, and to date, there has been to our knowledge almost no research focused specifically on the relationship between loanwords and their near synonyms. 

Here, we report on a Qualtrics experiment devised to probe the perceived relationship between 60 Māori loanwords (spanning established semantic categories: flora and fauna, material culture, and social culture) and their NZE equivalents, as ascertained from published sources. The synonymy judgments were elicited for pairs (e.g. whānau – family), using an analogue slider (ranging from 0 = non-synonymous to 100 = fully synonymous; see Figure 1). Because synonymy judgements are subjective, we also included ten fillers, to help us calibrate and interpret participant judgements. The 60 words were divided into two-word lists in order avoid fatigue, resulting in a within participant design. The target demographic for our population of interest consisted of young adults (18-24 years). 

Following cleaning and exclusions (e.g. participants who ignored filler items), the final dataset contained 260 participants. Inspecting the dataset showed a skew towards female participants, and for this reason, we focus our statistical analysis on this core sample, while keeping an eye on the full dataset containing all participants. Preliminary findings suggest that young adults think Māori loanwords are (highly) synonymous with NZE lexical alternatives. These findings will be further scrutinised with regression techniques and qualitative analyses of the comments provided in an open answer section of the questionnaire.

year: 2024