Non-Māori-speaking New Zealanders have a Māori proto-lexicon
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We investigate implicit vocabulary learning by adults who are exposed to a language in their ambient environment. Most New Zealanders do not speak Māori, yet are exposed to it throughout their lifetime. We show that this exposure leads to a large proto-lexicon – implicit knowledge of the existence of words and sub-word units without any associated meaning. Despite not explicitly knowing many Māori words, non-Māori-speaking New Zealanders are able to access this proto-lexicon to distinguish Māori words from Māori-like nonwords. What's more, they are able to generalize over the proto-lexicon to generate sophisticated phonotactic knowledge, which lets them evaluate the well-formedness of Māori-like nonwords just as well as fluent Māori speakers.
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Fields of Research::47 - Language, communication and culture::4704 - Linguistics::470401 - Applied linguistics and educational linguistics
Fields of Research::45 - Indigenous studies::4507 - Te ahurea, reo me te hītori o te Māori (Māori culture, language and history)::450712 - Te mātai i te reo Māori me te reo Māori (Māori linguistics and languages)