release 0.2 - June 00
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A Mäori male voice for the MBROLA synthesizer
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1.0 Description of the Maori diphone database
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MBF is the SIL (Summer Institute of Linguistics) language
code for New Zealand Mäori.

The Mäori diphone database consists of 230 diphones, 
recorded from a native male speaker of Mäori.

Maori diphones (d0.raw to d229.raw)
export.dat (label file)
readme.txt (this file)

Mäori orthographic representation is associated with the
Austronesian or Malayo-Polynesian languages. The phonemic
unit number is very small by comparison to English. 

Vowels:
There are five distinct phonemic vowel sounds in Mäori. Vowel
length can be short or long and so there are five long vowels
which correspond to twice the length of the five short vowels.
Therefore there are 10 vowel phonemes in pairs. 
Short /a/ /e/ /i/ /o/ /u/ and long /a:/ /e:/ /i:/ /o:/ /u:/. 

The presently accepted orthographic representation for the long
vowel is by the use of a macron (eg. /ä/ /ë/ /ï/ /ö/ /ü/) but some
still use the double short vowel to represent the long vowels
(eg. /aa/ /ee/).

NB: If the font used to read this document does not contain the
macron characters, then an umlaut will be the default.

SAMPA		Mäori 		Translation		Transcription
i						pipi				clam									pipi
ii					pïpï				chick								piipii
e						keke				cake									keke
ee					këkë				armpit							keekee
A						kaka				clothes						kAkA
AA					käkä				parrot							kAAkAA
o						koko				scoop								koko
oo					kökö				bellbird					kookoo
u						ruru				owl										ruru
uu					rürü				handshake				ruuruu

Consonants:
There are ten Mäori consonant phonemes, consisting of three
plosives /p/ /t/ /k/, two fricatives /h/ /f/, three nasals
/m/ /n/ /N/, one liquid /r/ and one semivowel  glide /w/.
Note that two consonants have orthographic symbols with two
Roman letters, where /f/ is represented by 'wh' and /N/ for 'ng'.

SAMPA		Mäori 		Translation		Transcription
p						poaka			pig										poAkA
t						tëpu				table								teepu
k						kuri				dog										kuri
h						haka				dance								hAkA
f						whare			house								fAre
m						motokä		motor car				motokAA
n						noho				sit										noho
N						ngutu			lips									Nutu
r						ringa			hand									riNA
w						wahine		woman								wAhine

Phonotactics:
Consonants can only appear in word-initial and word-content
positions, they cannot appear as word-final or in clusters
within words. Vowels can occur in all three positions, and
in multiple clusters. A Mäori word must therefore always end
with a vowel, but few appear in the word-initial position in
comparison to consonants. For example, (C)V, where C is optional.
All number of combinations of short and long vowels can appear 
in Mäori, how these are realised is based on syllabic structure: 
vowel length, morpheme boundaries, identical and non-identical 
pairs of vowels: monothongs and diphthongs, and also whether
used in casual or formal speech.


Mark R. Laws - Maaka.
Knowledge Engineering Laboratory - KEL.
Information Science Dept - Rorohiko Whai Ki Aho-Putaiao.
University of Otago - Te Whare Wananga o Otakou.
P.O.Box 56, Dunedin - Otepoti.
New Zealand - Aotearoa.

Phone: 64 3 479-8316
Facsimile: 64 3 479-8311
Cellular: 021 252-0858
URL: http://kel.otago.ac.nz/maaka/
EMail: <maaka@kel.otago.ac.nz>
        
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