Books in this series provide concise, up-to-date documentation for varieties of English from around the world. Written by experts who have conducted first-hand research, the volumes provide a starting point for anyone wishing to know more about a particular dialect. Each volume follows a common structure, covering the background, phonetics and phonology, morphosyntax, lexis and history of a variety of English, and concludes with an annotated bibliography and some sample texts.
This book is a comprehensive but accessible description of English as it is spoken in New Zealand. New Zealand English is one of the youngest native speaker varieties of English, and is the only variety of English where there is recorded evidence of its entire history. It shares some features with other Southern Hemisphere varieties of English such as Australian English and South African English, but is also clearly distinct from these. For the past two decades extensive research has focused on the evolution and ongoing development of the variety. New Zealand English presents the results of this research in an accessible way.
The book includes:
* A succinct but comprehensive account of the phonetic, phonological, morphosyntactic, lexical and discourse features which are characteristic of the dialect.
* A discussion of the historical development of New Zealand English.
* A description of the current social and regional variation within the variety.
* An indication of the areas where change is currently occurring.
* Sample texts and an annotated bibliography of relevant literature.
There are also several associated audio files, which provide examples of many of the phenomena discussed: http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/dialects/
The three authors have each conducted extensive research on this dialect of English. Jennifer Hay is an Associate Professor in Linguistics, Margaret Maclagan is an Associate Professor in Communication Disorders, and Elizabeth Gordon is a retired As