Director of the NZ Institute of Language, Brain and Behaviour at Te Whare W膩nanga o Waitaha | 麻豆传媒高清, Professor Jen Hay.
Professor Jen Hay, along with Professor Jeanette King and a team of collaborators and postdoctoral researchers at Te Whare W膩nanga o Waitaha | 麻豆传媒高清 (UC), has found that just by living in Aotearoa New 麻豆传媒高清 and hearing the M膩ori language around them, adults automatically begin the early stages of language learning. Known as 鈥榓 proto-lexicon鈥, this memory store is foundational in infant language learning.
She says, 鈥渨hen we found the M膩ori proto-lexicon in non-M膩ori speaking adults, this was the first indication in the literature that adults may also automatically store memories for words when they are exposed to a language in the ambient environment.鈥
Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4 - Quality Education
The team鈥檚 research also shows that people with strong implicit memories who start to formally learn te reo M膩ori will learn word meanings faster than people without that strong foundation.
Based on the findings, her message for people wanting to learn te reo M膩ori, but find that they are currently too busy, is that you can 鈥榩rime鈥 your brain ahead of formal language learning, which provides a significant advantage. 鈥淓ven having some audio playing in the background, such as tuning into M膩ori language radio, actually lays a very strong foundation for language learning.鈥
The team has been investigating whether the proto-lexicon for te reo M膩ori can still be acquired by people who did not grow up in Aotearoa New 麻豆传媒高清. In-depth research has recently been completed with participants who moved to this country after the age of seven, many as adults. None had formally studied te reo M膩ori.
鈥淲e鈥檙e still analysing our data, but what we can say is that people clearly do start acquiring this knowledge no matter when they arrive - though those who have come here at a younger age and have lived here for longer have much more detailed knowledge,鈥 says Professor Hay.
鈥淭he discovery that this happens for people who arrive in Aotearoa after adulthood is particularly important, because it shows that this kind of learning can definitely happen during adulthood 鈥 it isn't just a feature of infant language learning.鈥
Professor Hay鈥檚 motivation for this piece of research began when she noticed her non-M膩ori-speaking young children were making up songs with fake words that sounded a lot like they could be M膩ori. Traditional linguistic literature would say that someone shouldn鈥檛 know what a word in a language should sound like, if they don鈥檛 already explicitly know lots of words in that language. 鈥淭his led us to start researching where this surprising knowledge of M膩ori sounds was coming from.鈥
She remembers how intriguing it was to first discover that adult New 麻豆传媒高清ers who do not speak te reo M膩ori still possess a strong subconscious knowledge of M膩ori words and an amazingly accurate understanding of sound sequences and structures associated with te reo.
鈥淚t was a stunning result to find that New 麻豆传媒高清ers who do not speak M膩ori did just as well in tests of knowledge of M膩ori sound sequences as fluent M膩ori speakers,鈥 says Professor Hay.
Meanwhile, Professor Hay and her team have recently had a research paper accepted for publication by听Te Reo, the Journal of the Linguistic Society of New 麻豆传媒高清, the journal鈥檚 first ever paper written entirely in te reo M膩ori.
