The Cyclopedia Of New Zealand

This book makes an original contribution to the growing body of knowledge on the Scots abroad, presenting a coherent and comprehensive account of the Scottish immigrant experience in New Zealand.

New Zealand English - at just 150 years old - is one of the newest varieties of English, and is unique in that its full history and development are documented in extensive audio-recordings. The rich corpus of spoken language provided by New Zealand's 'mobile disk unit' has provided insight into how the earliest New Zealand-born settlers spoke, and consequently, how this new variety of English developed. On the basis of these recordings, this book examines and analyses the extensive linguistic changes New Zealand English has undergone since it was first spoken in the 1850s. The authors, all experts in phonetics and sociolinguistics, use the data to test previous explanations for new dialect formation, and to challenge current claims about the nature of language change. The first ever corpus-based study of the evolution of New Zealand English, this book will be welcomed by all those interested in phonetics, sociolinguistics, historical linguistics and dialectology.

This book examines the policy and practice of the insanity clauses within the immigration controls of New Zealand and the Commonwealth of Australia. It reveals those charged with operating the legislation to be non-psychiatric gatekeepers who struggled to match its intent. Regardless of the evolution in language and the location at which a migrant’s mental suitability was assessed, those with ‘inherent mental defects’ and ‘transient insanity’ gained access to these regions. This book accounts for the increased attempts to medicalise border control in response to the widening scope of terminology used for mental illnesses, disabilities and dysfunctions. Such attempts co-existed with the promotion of these regions as ‘invalids’ paradises’ by governments, shipping companies, and non-asylum doctors. Using a bureaucratic lens, this book exposes these paradoxes, and the failings within these nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Australasian nation-state building exercises.

Dr. Orchiston is a foremost authority on the subject of New Zealand astronomy, and here are the collected papers of his fruitful studies in this area, including both those published many years ago and new material. The papers herein review traditional Maori astronomy, examine the appearance of nautical astronomy practiced by Cook and his astronomers on their various stopovers in New Zealand during their three voyagers to the South Seas, and also explore notable nineteenth century New Zealand observatories historically, from significant telescopes now located in New Zealand to local and international observations made during the 1874 and 1882 transits of Venus and the nineteenth and twentieth century preoccupation of New Zealand amateur astronomers with comets and meteors. New Zealand astronomy has a truly rich history, extending from the Maori civilization in pre-European times through to the years when explorers and navigators discovered the region, up to pioneering research on the newly emerging field of radio astronomy during WWII and in the immediate post-war years. A complete survey of a neglected but rich national astronomical history, this does the subject full and comprehensive justice.