Modern New Zealand English is non-rhotic. However the first generation of New Zealand English speakers did display some rhoticity. The availability of recorded interviews with early New Zealanders, then, makes possible a systematic study of the relationship between the decline of rhoticity and the emergence of linking and intrusive /r/ in New Zealand English (NZE). This analysis of 67 speakers of early NZE provides, for the first time, a clear picture of the diachronic relationship between the decline of rhoticity and the emergence of /r/-sandhi in a dialect of English. This analysis is supplemented with an analysis of intrusive /r/ in modern New Zealand English -- an elicitation task with 16 participants.

Taken together, the two data-sets provide strong evidence that:

(1) /r/-sandhi did not come about as a sudden reanalysis or "rule-inversion" (contra the most common account in the literature), but rather, it emerged steadily and gradually with the loss of rhoticity.

(2) The contemporary /r/-sandhi system is not governed by a set of categorical phonological rules (contra most phonological literature on this topic), but rather is a variable, probabilistic phenomenon, which is conditioned by a range of linguistic and social factors.