This dissertation explores the phonetic mechanisms of the sound change known as rhotacism (/s/ greater than /z/ greater than /r/) which is observed in Italic, Germanic, and Sanskrit, among other languages, employing lab-based methods of "experimental historical phonology" (Ohala 1974), and approaching sound change from the theoretical standpoint…

Deponency has been treated with inconsistency in studies of Greek grammar with adverse implications to exegesis of the NT. In recent years, some grammarians have denied that deponency is a valid expression of voice. This work serves to contribute to a better understanding of this phenomenon in the Koine period so that the NT can be interpreted…

This study outlines the development of Portuguese and Spanish verbal morphology from Latin in the context of the Hispanic branch of Romance, with a focus on the conjugational classes, whose number has been reduced to only three in this branch of Western Romance. It is innovative in approaching the topic as a study of sequential productive grammars…

This dissertation offers new approaches to an old and well-known problem in the study of the development of Romance varieties: duplicate lexis or doublets. Traditional analyses of duplication are narrow in scope both in what qualifies as a doublet (the popular/learned opposition has dominated, to the exclusion of other pairs) and in channels of…

"The Style and Structure of 'Minnesang'" approaches a broad corpus of the medieval German love lyric from the perspective of historical phraseology and formulaicity. Overturning previous concerns of prosodic restriction in verse and the misapplication of contemporary notions of fixity, the dissertation provides an overview of…

The usage and disappearance of the Central Ibero-Romance future subjunctive have been extensively researched through Old Spanish texts. Studies on the future subjunctive as it evolved in the farther Western Ibero-Romance languages, represented by Galician and Portuguese, have been scarce, if not incomplete. This dissertation partially fills the…