William Colenso’s Māori-English Lexicon

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Charlotte Frances Thompson Darling
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Cultural Exchange ◽  
Language Learner ◽  
History Of Linguistics ◽  
History Of ◽  
Professional Standing ◽  
Printed Sources

<p>William Colenso, one of Victorian New Zealand’s most accomplished polymaths, is remembered best as a printer, a defrocked missionary, botanist, and politician. Up till now, his role as a lexicographer has been largely neglected. His major biographies touch only briefly on his attempt to compile a Māori-English dictionary while Colenso himself spent 30 years on this project. His Lexicon, published the year before his death, is only the incomplete letter A of Māori to English and a handful of pages of English to Māori. The neglect by Colenso’s biographers is a surprising omission given the length of time Colenso spent on his Lexicon, the amount of extant material that relates to it, and the richness of the Lexicon itself as a resource. This thesis asks what William Colenso’s Maori-English Lexicon contribute to our understanding of Colenso’s life, and about the history of language in New Zealand?  In chapter one, a brief outline of Colenso’s roles as a missionary, a botanist, a school inspector and a politician establish important biographical context for considering his attempt to compile a Lexicon. The main resource drawn upon is the 30 years’ worth of correspondence between Colenso and the New Zealand government relating to the Lexicon, which affords an overview of the project. The Lexicon itself is a rich resource. In chapter two, I have drawn on a methodology suggested by Ogilvie and Coleman in their paper Forensic Lexicography in order to interrogate the Lexicon. Lastly, in chapter three, themes and discourses found in the archive are considered.  Examining the Lexicon demonstrates how rich of a resource it is. The findings establish the wealth of information that the Lexicon can contribute to historical lexicography, and the history of linguistics in New Zealand. Colenso is revealed a ‘splitter’ in his lexicography, just as he was in his botany. He overwhelmingly drew on printed sources as citations when compiling his Lexicon, which raises questions about what ‘authority’ means when recording a language with an oral tradition.  Te reo Māori was a means for Colenso to access many aspects of te ao Māori. The Lexicon also reveals Colenso as a life-long language learner. The archive reveals Colenso as man deeply anxious about his professional standing. His insistence on what he referred to as fair and reasonable remuneration is an insistence on the worth of his knowledge.  This thesis argues that Colenso’s Lexicon is a product of language contact and cultural exchange. And it is a window into Colenso’s life as a man who learnt another language.</p>

William Colenso’s Māori-English Lexicon

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Charlotte Frances Thompson Darling
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Cultural Exchange ◽  
Language Learner ◽  
History Of Linguistics ◽  
History Of ◽  
Professional Standing ◽  
Printed Sources

<p>William Colenso, one of Victorian New Zealand’s most accomplished polymaths, is remembered best as a printer, a defrocked missionary, botanist, and politician. Up till now, his role as a lexicographer has been largely neglected. His major biographies touch only briefly on his attempt to compile a Māori-English dictionary while Colenso himself spent 30 years on this project. His Lexicon, published the year before his death, is only the incomplete letter A of Māori to English and a handful of pages of English to Māori. The neglect by Colenso’s biographers is a surprising omission given the length of time Colenso spent on his Lexicon, the amount of extant material that relates to it, and the richness of the Lexicon itself as a resource. This thesis asks what William Colenso’s Maori-English Lexicon contribute to our understanding of Colenso’s life, and about the history of language in New Zealand?  In chapter one, a brief outline of Colenso’s roles as a missionary, a botanist, a school inspector and a politician establish important biographical context for considering his attempt to compile a Lexicon. The main resource drawn upon is the 30 years’ worth of correspondence between Colenso and the New Zealand government relating to the Lexicon, which affords an overview of the project. The Lexicon itself is a rich resource. In chapter two, I have drawn on a methodology suggested by Ogilvie and Coleman in their paper Forensic Lexicography in order to interrogate the Lexicon. Lastly, in chapter three, themes and discourses found in the archive are considered.  Examining the Lexicon demonstrates how rich of a resource it is. The findings establish the wealth of information that the Lexicon can contribute to historical lexicography, and the history of linguistics in New Zealand. Colenso is revealed a ‘splitter’ in his lexicography, just as he was in his botany. He overwhelmingly drew on printed sources as citations when compiling his Lexicon, which raises questions about what ‘authority’ means when recording a language with an oral tradition.  Te reo Māori was a means for Colenso to access many aspects of te ao Māori. The Lexicon also reveals Colenso as a life-long language learner. The archive reveals Colenso as man deeply anxious about his professional standing. His insistence on what he referred to as fair and reasonable remuneration is an insistence on the worth of his knowledge.  This thesis argues that Colenso’s Lexicon is a product of language contact and cultural exchange. And it is a window into Colenso’s life as a man who learnt another language.</p>

Challenges facing the farmers of Central Otago

2014 ◽  
Vol 76 ◽  
pp. 25-28
Author(s):  
D.R. Stevens ◽  
J.P. Garden
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Valley Floor ◽  
History Of ◽  
Iconic Status

The Central Otago region, with its cold winters and hot summers, and valley floors with uplift mountains is definitely "a world of difference". At the NZGA conference in Alexandra in 1966 John Hercus stated "Central Otago has a lure which sets it apart from the rest of New Zealand. Its characteristics of geology, topography and climate, its history of occupation and exploitation, its scenery at once forbidding and yet strangely fascinating - these features combine to cast a spell which few who have been exposed, can ever fully escape" (Hercus 1966). The region and its high country have an iconic status epitomised by the "Southern Man" stereotype. This places Central Otago deep in the psyche of the nation. With this goes a unique and significant set of conditions under which farming must take place. Not only does the region have the biophysical challenges of soils, water and climate to contend with, but a wider set of values, often imposed from elsewhere. Fifty years after that first conference we remain challenged. What are the opportunities in front of us and how should we best accommodate the challenge of maintaining a viable enterprise and at the same time, respecting the intense public and customer interest in our use of land and livestock? Central Otago and the associated high country of the Lakes district and McKenzie basin can be divided into three farming types. These are the valley floor irrigable type, the flat and downland dryland regions, and the high country. Each of these has challenges that are at times unique, but often overlap with problems faced in other regions.

The status of Gideon Mantell's “first” Iguanodon tooth in the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa

1997 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 397-421 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHN C. YALDWYN ◽  
GARRY J. TEE ◽  
ALAN P. MASON
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Charles Lyell ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
Gideon Mantell

A worn Iguanodon tooth from Cuckfield, Sussex, illustrated by Mantell in 1827, 1839, 1848 and 1851, was labelled by Mantell as the first tooth sent to Baron Cuvier in 1823 and acknowledged as such by Sir Charles Lyell. The labelled tooth was taken to New Zealand by Gideon's son Walter in 1859. It was deposited in a forerunner of the Museum of New Zealand, Wellington in 1865 and is still in the Museum, mounted on a card bearing annotations by both Gideon Mantell and Lyell. The history of the Gideon and Walter Mantell collection in the Museum of New Zealand is outlined, and the Iguanodon tooth and its labels are described and illustrated. This is the very tooth which Baron Cuvier first identified as a rhinoceros incisor on the evening of 28 June 1823.

Modern Greek V V dvandva compounds: A linguistic innovation in the history of the Indo-European languages

2009 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela Ralli
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
High Rate ◽  
Compound Formation ◽  
Modern Greek ◽  
Late Medieval Period ◽  
European Languages ◽  
History Of ◽  
Internal Change ◽  
Contact Situation ◽  
Asian Languages

This paper deals with [V V] dvandva compounds, which are frequently used in East and Southeast Asian languages but also in Greek and its dialects: Greek is in this respect uncommon among Indo-European languages. It examines the appearance of this type of compounding in Greek by tracing its development in the late Medieval period, and detects a high rate of productivity in most Modern Greek dialects. It argues that the emergence of the [V V] dvandva pattern is not due to areal pressure or to a language-contact situation, but it is induced by a language internal change. It associates this change with the rise of productivity of compounding in general, and the expansion of verbal compounds in particular. It also suggests that the change contributes to making the compound-formation patterns of the language more uniform and systematic. Claims and proposals are illustrated with data from Standard Modern Greek and its dialects. It is shown that dialectal evidence is crucial for the study of the rise and productivity of [V V] dvandva compounds, since changes are not usually portrayed in the standard language.

LET'S GO TO FRENZY A Brief History of New Zealand Music TV and Music Video

Perfect Beat ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 111-121
Author(s):  
Bruce Sheridan ◽  
Philip Hayward
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Music Video ◽  
History Of

Grimm Legacies

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jack Zipes
Keyword(s):  
Fairy Tales ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Fairy Tale ◽  
Folk Tales ◽  
Brothers Grimm ◽  
Folk Tale ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
High Standards ◽  
Wilhelm Grimm

This book explores the legacy of the Brothers Grimm in Europe and North America, from the nineteenth century to the present. The book reveals how the Grimms came to play a pivotal and unusual role in the evolution of Western folklore and in the history of the most significant cultural genre in the world—the fairy tale. Folklorists Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm sought to discover and preserve a rich abundance of stories emanating from an oral tradition, and encouraged friends, colleagues, and strangers to gather and share these tales. As a result, hundreds of thousands of wonderful folk and fairy tales poured into books throughout Europe and have kept coming. The book looks at the transformation of the Grimms' tales into children's literature, the Americanization of the tales, the “Grimm” aspects of contemporary tales, and the tales' utopian impulses. It shows that the Grimms were not the first scholars to turn their attention to folk tales, but were vital in expanding readership and setting the high standards for folk-tale collecting that continue through the current era. The book concludes with a look at contemporary adaptations of the tales and raises questions about authenticity, target audience, and consumerism. The book examines the lasting universal influence of two brothers and their collected tales on today's storytelling world.

From the History of the Tatar Soviet Children’s Book Art

2010 ◽  
pp. 56-60
Author(s):  
Aislu R. Abdulkhakova
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Period ◽  
Book Art ◽  
Book Design ◽  
Children's Book ◽  
History Of ◽  
Printed Sources

In this article the national origins of Tatar children’s book art formation and the influence of Russian traditions of book design are considered. The history of Tatar children’s book design art development in the Soviet period covers the field briefly. The author succeeded in eliciting some facts in the field of children’s book design in the local archival and printed sources, and these facts are produced in the article. The names of some graphic artists are mentioned.

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