title: Introduction: Sylvia, a New Zealander

authors: Jones, Alison

subjects: Sylvia Ashton-Warner

abstract: Sylvia Ashton-Warner had an intensely ambivalent relationship with the land of her birth. Despite receiving many accolades in New Zealand – including the country’s major literary award – she claimed to have been rejected and persecuted, and regularly announced that her educational and literary achievements were unappreciated or insufficiently acknowledged by her compatriots. In her darkest moments, she railed against New Zealand and New Zealander, even stating in one television interview: “I’m not a New Zealander!”

text: Introduction: Sylvia, a New Zealander Sylvia Ashton-Warner had an intensely ambivalent relationship with the land of her birth. Despite receiving many accolades in New Zealand – including the country’s major literary award – she claimed to have been rejected and persecuted, and regularly announced that her educational and literary achievements were unappreciated or insufficiently acknowledged by her compatriots. In her darkest moments, she railed against New Zealand and New Zealander, even stating in one television interview: “I’m not a New Zealander!”

year: 2009

title: Return on investment: Investigating managerial preferences for alternative return on investment reports

authors: Lys, Brendan John

subjects: ROI

abstract: Responses of 32 Officers and 1 Non Commissioned Officer, of the Royal New Zealand Navy, to three return on investment (ROI) training reports were investigated. The three report types were presented as a function of two ROI calculations: Critical Outcome Technique, and Utility Analysis - with Utility Analysis being used as the basis for two of the three reports. Participants were placed into one of three groups, each group consisted of 11 participants. Each participant group was presented with one of the three report types. Responses from participants were gained using a survey instrument for two constructs: perceived usefulness, and perceived understanding and clarity. The results of this study replicated the findings of previous studies in this area (i.e. Carson, Becker & Henderson, 1998; Macan & Foster, 2004). An analysis of quantitative data using Kruskal-Wallis statistical test failed to show significantly different perceptions of either perceived usefulness, or perceived understanding and clarity between the three groups. While the presented reports lacked high levels of support from participants, the findings of Latham and Whyte’s study (1994) are brought further into question (i.e. Cronshaw, 1997; Macan & Foster, 2004) as utility analysis based reports did not negatively influence participants on the uptake of the hypothetical training initiative. Content analysis of the qualitative data, revealed a number of potential factors which may have caused a lack of significance between report type preferences. Most critically these causes may not be limited to this this study alone, but may have implications for both previous and future studies into ROI acceptance.

text: Return on investment: Investigating managerial preferences for alternative return on investment reports Responses of 32 Officers and 1 Non Commissioned Officer, of the Royal New Zealand Navy, to three return on investment (ROI) training reports were investigated. The three report types were presented as a function of two ROI calculations: Critical Outcome Technique, and Utility Analysis - with Utility Analysis being used as the basis for two of the three reports. Participants were placed into one of three groups, each group consisted of 11 participants. Each participant group was presented with one of the three report types. Responses from participants were gained using a survey instrument for two constructs: perceived usefulness, and perceived understanding and clarity. The results of this study replicated the findings of previous studies in this area (i.e. Carson, Becker & Henderson, 1998; Macan & Foster, 2004). An analysis of quantitative data using Kruskal-Wallis statistical test failed to show significantly different perceptions of either perceived usefulness, or perceived understanding and clarity between the three groups. While the presented reports lacked high levels of support from participants, the findings of Latham and Whyte’s study (1994) are brought further into question (i.e. Cronshaw, 1997; Macan & Foster, 2004) as utility analysis based reports did not negatively influence participants on the uptake of the hypothetical training initiative. Content analysis of the qualitative data, revealed a number of potential factors which may have caused a lack of significance between report type preferences. Most critically these causes may not be limited to this this study alone, but may have implications for both previous and future studies into ROI acceptance.

year: 2011

title: Lost in translation or lack of nuance? Perception of (near-)synonymy of common te reo Māori loanwords in New Zealand English

authors: Pohl, Alexander

abstract: Ongoing contact between languages and their speakers inevitably leads to a flow of words being borrowed from one language into another. Research in the field of language contact has established and documented the kinds of borrowed words that stick in their recipient language (Haspelmath 2009; Winford 2010). However, one question that has received comparatively less attention is how a newly adopted loanword relates to the structure of the existing lexicon it enters. 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 approach, most studies looking at lexical variation between loanwords and their (near-)synonyms employ corpus linguistics methods (e.g. Onysko & Winter-Froemel 2011; Soares da Silva 2013). However, there is variation in how these corpus studies have investigated loanword meanings, and, to our knowledge, there has been almost no experimental research focussed specifically on the relationship between loanwords and their (near-)synonyms to date. This project presents a large-scale experimental approach from a case-study examining Māori loanwords borrowed into New Zealand English (NZE). NZE presents an unusual language contact situation because it involves a dominant language (NZE) receiving an exceptionally high amount of lexical material (words and phrases) from an Indigenous language: Māori. Further adding to the uniqueness of this contact situation is the fact that only a fraction of the population (<10%) speaks Māori fluently (Statistics New Zealand 2019). Nonetheless, Māori loanwords are ubiquitous, salient, and probably still increasing within the NZE lexicon (Macalister 2007; Trye et al. 2019). One important dimension of this set of borrowings are their semantic characteristics, which straddle three main classes of words: flora and fauna (mānuka ‘tea tree’), material culture (maunga ‘mountain’) and social culture (mana ‘power’).  Here, we report on a Qualtrics experiment devised to probe the perceived relationship between 60 Māori loanwords and their NZE equivalents, as ascertained from published sources. The synonymy judgements were elicited for pairs (e.g. whānau – family) using an analogue slider (ranging from 0 = non-synonymous to 100 = fully synonymous). Data was collected using a three-tiered questionnaire: 1) assessing synonymy of loanwords; 2) eliciting strategies for semantic assessments; and 3) collating background information about participants. Following cleaning and exclusions, the dataset showed a skew towards female participants, and for this reason, we focus our statistical analysis on the core sample containing (n = 170) young women (18-24 years). The results of the synonymy judgements analysis consist of qualitative inspections of box plots in relation to the semantic characteristics of Māori words in question, as well as sociodemographic variables of interest, specifically: years lived in Aotearoa NZ, and a composite score capturing exposure to and attitude towards Māori (TRMO). Preliminary findings suggest that many people think Māori loanwords are (highly) synonymous with NZE lexical alternatives. Our regression analyses exhibit evidence that years lived in Aotearoa NZ (p = 0.0054) and TRMO (p = 8.26e-10) can predict knowledge of Māori words. No statistically significant evidence was found for any predictors regarding the scores of the synonymy judgements; instead, we found that the random effects account for most of the variation. This is indicative of idiosyncratic loanword behaviour, in line with situations where variation is in-flux. These findings will be complemented by qualitative analyses of comments provided by participants in the open answer section (2). The talk will conclude with a summary of contributions to the general understanding of loanword meanings and contact-induced lexical change.

text: Lost in translation or lack of nuance? Perception of (near-)synonymy of common te reo Māori loanwords in New Zealand English Ongoing contact between languages and their speakers inevitably leads to a flow of words being borrowed from one language into another. Research in the field of language contact has established and documented the kinds of borrowed words that stick in their recipient language (Haspelmath 2009; Winford 2010). However, one question that has received comparatively less attention is how a newly adopted loanword relates to the structure of the existing lexicon it enters. 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 approach, most studies looking at lexical variation between loanwords and their (near-)synonyms employ corpus linguistics methods (e.g. Onysko & Winter-Froemel 2011; Soares da Silva 2013). However, there is variation in how these corpus studies have investigated loanword meanings, and, to our knowledge, there has been almost no experimental research focussed specifically on the relationship between loanwords and their (near-)synonyms to date. This project presents a large-scale experimental approach from a case-study examining Māori loanwords borrowed into New Zealand English (NZE). NZE presents an unusual language contact situation because it involves a dominant language (NZE) receiving an exceptionally high amount of lexical material (words and phrases) from an Indigenous language: Māori. Further adding to the uniqueness of this contact situation is the fact that only a fraction of the population (<10%) speaks Māori fluently (Statistics New Zealand 2019). Nonetheless, Māori loanwords are ubiquitous, salient, and probably still increasing within the NZE lexicon (Macalister 2007; Trye et al. 2019). One important dimension of this set of borrowings are their semantic characteristics, which straddle three main classes of words: flora and fauna (mānuka ‘tea tree’), material culture (maunga ‘mountain’) and social culture (mana ‘power’).  Here, we report on a Qualtrics experiment devised to probe the perceived relationship between 60 Māori loanwords and their NZE equivalents, as ascertained from published sources. The synonymy judgements were elicited for pairs (e.g. whānau – family) using an analogue slider (ranging from 0 = non-synonymous to 100 = fully synonymous). Data was collected using a three-tiered questionnaire: 1) assessing synonymy of loanwords; 2) eliciting strategies for semantic assessments; and 3) collating background information about participants. Following cleaning and exclusions, the dataset showed a skew towards female participants, and for this reason, we focus our statistical analysis on the core sample containing (n = 170) young women (18-24 years). The results of the synonymy judgements analysis consist of qualitative inspections of box plots in relation to the semantic characteristics of Māori words in question, as well as sociodemographic variables of interest, specifically: years lived in Aotearoa NZ, and a composite score capturing exposure to and attitude towards Māori (TRMO). Preliminary findings suggest that many people think Māori loanwords are (highly) synonymous with NZE lexical alternatives. Our regression analyses exhibit evidence that years lived in Aotearoa NZ (p = 0.0054) and TRMO (p = 8.26e-10) can predict knowledge of Māori words. No statistically significant evidence was found for any predictors regarding the scores of the synonymy judgements; instead, we found that the random effects account for most of the variation. This is indicative of idiosyncratic loanword behaviour, in line with situations where variation is in-flux. These findings will be complemented by qualitative analyses of comments provided by participants in the open answer section (2). The talk will conclude with a summary of contributions to the general understanding of loanword meanings and contact-induced lexical change.

year: 2024