This study examines children’s development and incorporation of literacy expertise across multiple sites and the transitions to school by four Māori preschool children, their whānau (families) and their teachers in Aotearoa/New Zealand. This study is embedded in a Kaupapa Māori framework of understanding and explaining teaching and learning processes across multiple sites of learning for children whose practices reflect ways of being and acting Māori. Descriptions of teaching and learning processes are also explained utilising a co-constructivist theoretical framework. These descriptions and explanations focus on the psychological processes of learning and development that children, whānau and teachers’ engage in their practice. A two phase case study design was employed that examines the teaching and learning processes of literacy across multiple sites. The first phase provides qualitative data that describes and explains how the different sorts of literacy and language activities are coconstructed by whānau and children. The ways by which literacy activities are constructed are inherent in parents ideas about teaching and learning reflected out of their diverse pedagogical practices. The distinct pedagogical practices also highlight the multiple pathways to learning that children developed and experienced in becoming an expert. This study also reported the influence of early educational settings as alternative and multiple contexts by which learning is organised and constructed. The different contexts provided families with specific ideas and practices about the teaching and learning process. The second phase of the study provides descriptions of how children’s literacy expertise was incorporated into classroom literacy and language activities. This phase of the study examines how teachers provided opportunities by which children’s literacy expertise was incorporated into classroom activities. This study reported incidents where incorporation of children’s level of literacy expertise was enhanced while other children’s literacy expertise was discouraged in classroom activities. The significance of the reported differences of incorporation was provided from teacher’s ideas and beliefs about children’s literacy expertise upon entry to school. The study showed how teacher’s ideas reflected the way that they organised and constructed literacy activities. Teacher’s ideas also reflected their awareness of the diversity of children’s literacy expertise. The earlier phase of this study examined the multiple ways and multiple contexts by which children learn and develop literacy expertise. Incorporation of children’s literacy expertise into classroom activities was determined by the degree to which teachers made connections that resonated children’s expertise. This was also determined by teacher’s instructional practices in the context of the classroom environment. The implications of this study make important contributions to pedagogical practices for teachers in classroom environments. The descriptions and explanations reported in this study highlight the complexities of teaching and learning for children of diverse cultural and language communities.

This study looked at the functions and uses of the problematic particle ai in New Zealand Māori. Ai is described primarily as a verbal particle. It appears in a number of seemingly disparate constructions, has no parallel in English, and there has never been a satisfactory explanation of all its uses. The data consists of a large corpus of sentences containing ai that were extracted from selected texts written by native speakers from as early as the 19th Century up until 2005. Sentences were also solicited from fluent speakers. Analysis of the data and discussions with native speakers led to the conclusion that ai exists as two distinct particles, which were labelled habitual ai, and anaphoric ai. Habitual ai is a verbal marker that confers habitual aspect on its verb. It was found that it is mainly used by speakers from the Eastern regions of the North Island. Anaphoric ai refers back to some element earlier in the discourse. It has two forms, labelled resumptive ai and resultative ai. Resumptive ai is an anaphoric pro-form that resumes a specific noun phrase in its clause. It was found to have a grammatical function. When resumptive ai was deleted from its clause consultants judged the results ill-formed. An example of a construction with resumptive ai is a sentence with an adverbial of reason located before the verb. Resultative ai locates its clause in prior discourse, making a causal link between its clause and the prior element. It was found to have a mainly lexical function. When resultative ai was deleted from its clause consultants judged that the meaning had altered and that the causal link was weakened or lost. An example of a construction with resultative ai is a purpose clause which follows an action that has been carried out for that specific purpose. This thesis provides a unified explanation for all uses of ai. It also accounts for previously unexplained appearances, by showing that one form of ai may occur in environments restricted to another. Its appearance in non-verbal phrases are accounted for, and observations have been made about changes in its use over time.

ABSTRACT Several writers have argued that New Zealand’s colonial history has thwarted optimal identity development among Māori (Awatere, 1984; Lawson Te-Aho, 1998a; 1998b). In recent decades the view that Māori identity may be restored via enculturation has gained widespread acceptance (Broughton, 1993; Edwards, 1999). Recent research indicates, however, that many Māori perceive their identities in ways that differ from the enculturated ideal (Borrell, 2005; Te Hoe Nuku Roa, 1996; 1999). Relatively little is known of the diverse interpretations that comprise ‘alternative’ Māori identity forms. This thesis aims to contribute to current understandings of Māori identity by exploring identity change across three generations of Māori women. For the purposes of the research, identity was treated as ‘held’ within personal life-stories and transformations were investigated by comparing the life-stories of 35 Māori women from different age groups. Attention was given to the impact of three socio-historical processes on identity: the mass migration of Māori from rural to urban locations after the 1950s, the drive towards Māori assimilation which underpinned Government policy towards Māori until the late 1960s, and the Māori political and cultural renaissance which gathered momentum in New Zealand from the 1970s. Data analyses found participants born prior to urbanisation evaluated their Māori identities positively and this seemed to reflect their isolation from Pākehā and exposure to competent Māori role models during their formative years. Participants aged between 35 and 49 expressed disharmony and tension around their Māori identities which many attributed to their early exposure to negative evaluations of Māori people. ‘Post-renaissance’ Māori, aged between 18 and 35, reported prizing their cultural distinctiveness from a young age and affirmed Māori political, cultural and social equality despite what they perceived as enduring Pākehā prejudice. This interpretation appeared to reflect their early exposure to educational experiences which imparted a sense of cultural pride and a national news media which publicised Māori political activism. Women’s life-stories reveal distinct intergenerational differences, a multiplicity of interpretations of Māori identity not widely articulated in literature, and the need to expand current paradigms of Māori identity to incorporate the individuality of group members.

This thesis is an attempt to address the major theoretical and practical problems in compiling a monolingual Tongan dictionary. The first question that is asked is: what can be learned from the lexicographical experiences of Pacific languages to date? Since the Pacific islands share a common history with regard to European contact, and since many Pacific languages are characterised by the same basic principles, many languages being of the same language family, Austronesian, it is expected that important issues pertaining to lexicography in a language like Tongan would be similar to those in related Pacific languages, and much will be learned from the experiences and achievements in lexicography of other Pacific languages. For this reason, chapter 1 looks at a brief history of lexicography in the Pacific islands, and chapter 2 reviews selected Pacific dictionaries with a view to identifying their merits and demerits. Chapter 3 then identifies the main functions envisaged for the monolingual Tongan dictionary in developing the Tongan language. These functions are responses to language needs that arise out of the sociolinguistic situation. Chapters 4 - 7 examine various aspects of the language that are relevant to dictionary making and try to determine appropriate ways of describing the language in the dictionary. Chapter 4 gives a description of the main aspects of the Tongan phonological system and suggests ways of improving the present orthography for use in the dictionary. Chapter 5 looks at Tongan morphology and suggests, with reference to the sociolinguistic process of conventionalisation, an answer to the question: what is a lexical item in Tongan? The principles governing the selection of lexical items for inclusion in the dictionary are given here. Chapter 6 looks at major aspects of Tongan syntax, namely parts of speech, transitivity, and possession, with a view to determining how they are to be used in dictionary entries. Chapter 7 looks at the way meaning and usage are to be represented in the dictionary. Chapter 8 addresses the question of organization and presentation of material in the dictionary. Principles of ordering headwords, homonyms, the senses of headwords, and the elements of an entry are discussed. Chapter 9 consists of sample entries for different word categories in Tongan. The entries, which are translated into English for assessment purposes, show the recommended ways of presenting different word types in Tongan.

I nga rua tekau ma rima tau nei ka puta ake ētahi kaupapa mātauranga hei whakaora i te reo tūturu o Aotearoa, i te reo Māori me ōna tikanga. Ka tirohia e tēnei tuhinga roa te kaupapa, arā, ma te kōrero Māori o te hunga tata ki ngā tamariki e ako ana i roto i te reo e puawai ai te kaupapa ako i te reo Māori. Ka tirohia te kaupapa nei, te ārohi i nga kōrero pukapuka-a-whānau hei tautoko i te reo. He huarahi te 'ao tuhi' i roto i nga mahi o ia rā hei whakawhānui i te whakaora i te reo, ki te pupuri hoki i nga tikanga Māori. Ka rangahautia e rua nga mahi e pā ana ki nga ritenga kōrero pukapuka-a-whānau o ngā tamariki nohinohi kātahi anō ka uru ki te kura kaupapa Māori. Ko te māramatanga i puta mai i ēnei rangahau, ma te hāngai tonu ki te kōrero tahi i nga pukapuka ki nga tamariki kua rima nga tau, e tupu ai te kōrero i te reo Māori i nga kāinga, e hāpai ai hoki nga kōkiritanga ki te whakaora, ki te whakawhānui i te reo i roto i nga kura me nga whānau. In the last quarter of the twentieth century a number of educational initiatives have emerged aimed at regenerating Māori, the indigenous language of Aotearoa-New Zealand. This thesis explores the premise that in order for such educational initiatives to be effective, those who have intimate contact with students in their personal domains of life also need to be interacting with them in the target language. It examines interactions in family literacy practices as a constitutive context for adult Māori language elaboration and acquisition processes. 'Literacy' is conceived as providing tools within sociocultural practices to amplify Māori language regeneration and cultural persistence. Across two separate studies the home literacy practices of ten families with new entrant children in a Māori medium sclooling initiative, kura kaupapa Māori, are examined. The results of the studies indicate that specific literacy-related strategies sited in bookreading with 5 year olds can increase the use of Māori language within homes, thereby increasing the effectiveness of Māori language regeneration programmes and initiatives across school and family settings.

Phylogenetic reconstruction, originally developed for biological systematics, is a tool which is increasingly being used for anthropological studies addressing the problems of population origins and settlement patterns. Given the nature of the phylogenetic model, it is expected that phylogenetic analyses only work well on populations that have stopped sharing biological information. This is particularly pertinent when looking at phylogenies of Pacific populations. This thesis presents a unique biological approach to the study of human settlement and population mobility in Polynesia, focusing on an animal that was transported through the Pacific by the ancestral Polynesians. I argue that analyses of genetic variation of the Polynesian rat (Ratus exulans) are appropriate for a phylogenetic model of human colonisation and mobility. DNA phylogenies derived from 132 mitochondria1 control region sequences of ratus exulans from East Polynesia are - presented. These results (1) identify a Southern Cook/Society Islands origin for all East Polynesian R. exulans populations, (2) indicate dual origins for Hawaiian R. exulans, and (3) indicate multiple origins for New Zealand Ratus exulans. These results are inconsistent with models of Pacific settlement involving substantial isolation following colonisation, and confirm the value of genetic studies of commensals for human prehistory.

Karam is spoken in the Bismarck-Schrader Ranges on the northern border of the Western Highlands District of Australian New Guinea. Karam speakers, numbering some 10,000 to 14,000, occupy several valleys both on the Ramu and the Jimi falls of these ranges. On the Ramu fall they occuPY the AiomeRamu slopes, the Asai Valley, and the Upper Simbai Valley as far east as Songuvak on the northern side and Tembiamp on the southern side. On the Jimi fall they occupy the Aunjang and Kaiment Valleys, and the Upper Kaironk Valley as far west as Aynong Resthouse. 1.2 External relationships of Karam. Wurm states that Karam is related to but is not a member of his East New Guinea Highland? Stock, a stock to which he assigns 50 of the 60-odd languages spoken in the three Highlands districts of Australian New Guinea. On the basis of lexicostatistical and typological evidence (see Appendix A) Wurm claims that Karam, together with the East New Guinea Highlands Stock and several other languages spoken in Australian Highlands form a micro-phylum which he calls the East New Guinea Highlands

Lapita is the name given by archaeologists to a material culture complex distributed from Papua New Guinea to Samoa about 3000 years ago, which marks major economic changes in Near Oceania and the first settlement by humans of Remote Oceania. Those parts of Solomon Islands that lie in Near Oceania, together with Bougainville, comprise a large gap in the recorded distribution of Lapita, which the current research seeks to explain. At Roviana Lagoon, centrally located in this gap, scatters of pottery, stone artefacts, and other stone items are found in shallow water in this sheltered, landlocked lagoon, initially thought to be late derivatives of Lapita. This research seeks method and theory to aid in the interpretation of this type of archaeological record. Intensive littoral survey discovered a wider chronological range of pottery styles than had previously been recorded, including materials attributable directly to the Lapita material culture complex. A study of vessel brokenness and completeness enabled sample evaluation, estimation of a parent population from which the sample derived, assessment of the state of preservation of the sample, and systematic choice of unit of quantification. Studies of wave exposure of collection sites and taphonomic evidence from sherds concluded that the cultural formation process of these sites was stilt house settlement (as found elsewhere in Near Oceania for Lapita) over deeper water than today. Falling relative sea levels and consequent increasing effects of swash-zone processes have resulted in high archaeological visibility and poor state of preservation at Roviana Lagoon. Analysis of ceramic and lithic variability and spatial analysis allowed the construction of a provisional chronology in need of further testing. Indications are that there is good potential to construct a robust, high-resolution ceramic chronology by focussing on carefully controlled surface collection from this sort of location, ceramic seriation and testing/calibration using direct dating by AMS radiocarbon and Thermoluminescence. Data on preservation and archaeological visibility of stilt house settlements along a sheltered emerging coastline allows preservation and visibility for this type of settlement to be modeled elsewhere. When such a model is applied to other areas of the Lapita gap, which are predominantly either less favourable for preservation or less favourable for archaeological visibility, the gap in the distribution of Lapita can be seen to be an area of low probability of detection by archaeologists, meaning there is currently no evidence for absence of settlement in the past, and good reason to think that Lapita was continuously distributed across Near Oceania as a network of stilt village settlement. This finding highlights the need for explicit models of probability of detection to discover or read the Lapita archaeological record. Keywords: pottery; Lapita; formation processes; surface archaeology; tidal archaeology; Oceania

This thesis explores representations of Maaori women characters in plays written by Maaori between 1980 and 2000, arguing that, as the level of self-determination in Maaori theatre has increased, these representations have become less stereotyped and more reflective of a range of Maaori women’s realities. The thesis suggests that waahine dramatists in particular represent contemporary Maaori cultural identity as flexible, diverse and changing. The Introduction gives reasons for the thesis' focus on Maaori women and outlines three major influences which have determined the approach to close-readings and analyses of waahine characters in the body of the thesis: an early Paakehaa representation of Maaori women, an increase of Maaori dramatists and the emergence of Maaori women's feminism. The thesis comprises a further six chapters. Chapter One contextualises the play analyses which appear in Chapters Four Five and Six by describing a Maaori theatre and drama whakapapa that stakes a significant and influential place for waahine theatre practitioners. Chapters Two and Three explore tino rangatiratanga/sel-determination and marae-concept theatre (respectively), arguing that between 1980 and 2000 these aspects of content and form have created theatrical conditions which facilitate Maaori women's representation. Chapters Four, Five and Six show that, as Maaori women such as Renee' Rena Owen, Riwia Brown, Roma Potiki and Briar Grace-Smith have become more active in the Maaori theatre whakapapa, contemporary representations of Maaori women have become more complex and diverse. A set of bibliographic appendices provides detailed lists of first productions of plays mentioned in the thesis. Throughout, the thesis maps the increased visibility and presence of Maaori women on the New Zealand stage, showing how in the years 1980-2000 the theatre has become a potent site for expression and exploration of Maaori cultural identity.

In the thirties and forties politics and public themes bore in upon writers influencing what they wrote about, the forms they chose and their conception of their function in society. It is a period in which writers sought to make literature serve the larger political end and often artistic merit is a function of the success the writer had in accommodating in his work the demands of outside pressures. It is always difficult to detach a period of history from the longer continuum but there is, nevertheless, a case to be made for viewing the years from about 1930 to around 1950 as a relatively homogeneous unit in New Zealand's literary history, distinct in important respects from what came before and from what followed. The new generation of writers in England in the thirties, particularly Auden and the group around him influenced young New Zealand writers both technically and in the attitudes they adopted to the relationship between the artist and society. The prevailing left-wing ethos emphasised the political and public responsibilities of the writer. Retreat into private, esoteric, literary modes was seen as an abdication of these responsibilities. The major themes of this period in New Zealand writing were social realism and nationalism; the literary products of the pressures exerted by political and economic forces. For the young writers the political awareness and sense of social commitment generated by the depression, together with the crusade to inhabit the land imaginatively, provided a sense of literary direction. These writers and their contemporaries accepted responsibility in both these areas seeing themselves as crusaders for social justice and creators of the imaginative understanding necessary to achieve a sense of belonging to this country. Such an understanding would be reached not through seeing it as offspring of England, nor as a picturesque, innocent new society; but by exploring it honestly and creating the terms and vocabulary for describing it. This study documents the careers of John Mulgan, Frank Sargeson, R.A.K. Mason, A.R.D. Fairburn and Allen Curnow in the period, roughly, 1930 to 1950, and looks at the ways each responded to the public demands they perceived were placed upon them. In their different ways these writers went about the business of changing New Zealand society, broadening its understanding of itself, creating an atmosphere conducive to artistic and literary development. Despite the fact that the degree of success in accommodating these demands varies considerably from writer to writer, the literary output of the period as a whole generated the confidence and energy that were a prerequisite to the development of an indigenous literature. During this period there developed an acceptance, albeit highly critical, of New Zealand and a feeling that the tradition which had been established in the thirties and forties could be extended by succeeding generations of artists and writers.