This investigation tests the validity of three theories of languages applied to data on lexical gender in the Medieval period of the Romance languages. By analyzing and comparing data from the Miracles of Our Lady, in combination with data from various other researchers, certain patterns of regularity and irregularity can be observed. The primary focus addresses the lexical gender assignment of nouns in the various Romance languages, in particular in the merger of the Latin neuter gender with the masculine and feminine genders. The overall changes and stasis of the history of lexical gender in the Romance languages, can be applied to various theories of language change in order to analyze and understand various phenomena. The phenomena examined in this investigation include the topics of lexical gender change and stasis, 'undecided' and ambiguous lexical gender assignment, and mass-gender elements. In addition, the theories of Lightfoot (1979, 1991), Keller (1994) and Croft (1996, 2000) are used to eludidate contemporary theoretical understanding of this topic. Lightfoot and Keller are chosen as representatives of Formalism and Functionalism, respectively, as they are often used in order to describe and discuss historical language change; the theory of Croft is a new theory which can benefit from further research. It is found that the theory of Croft (2000) best explains the research questions, but more work is recommended in order to fully understand the various phenomena of lexical gender in the history of the Romance languages, and in order to ensure the veracity of the theory, Croft's (2000) Evolutionary Theory must be tested further.

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A central claim of Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky 1993, McCarthy and Prince 1993a) is that phonological variation can be modeled through the variable ranking of universal constraints. In this thesis, I test this claim by examining variation in the tongue root vowel harmony system in a number of closely related yet distinct Bantu languages of Congo and Zaire. The twenty-odd languages are drawn from each of Guthrie 1967's eight Bantu C. subgroups and are shown to vary along a number of dimensions. One is morphological, related to whether or not the harmonic element in the lexical root extends to prefixes and suffixes. This variation is shown to follow from the variable ranking of constraints that seek to ALIGN the harmonic feature, [retracted tongue root] ([rtr]) with the edges of the morphological domains STEM and WORD. A second parameter of variation concerns the relationship between high vowels and [rtr]. A third dimension involves the interaction of [rtr] with the low vowel [a] under harmony. Here, three patterns involving (i) low vowel assimilation, (ii) low vowel opacity, or (iii) low vowel transparency under harmony are shown to follow from the variable ranking of a few constraints. A significant theme that emereges in the study is recognizing and characterizing the distinct morphological and phonological domain edges involved in vowel harmony. An important contribution of this study is in bringing to light a language family where phonological tongue height, in this case expressed by the feature [low], is shown to be incompatible with tongue root retraction, as expressed in the feature [rtr]. Although the gestures of tongue body lowering and tongue root retraction are sympathetic in the articulatory dimension and in their acoustic effect, they are seen to be phonologically hostile, in fact, because of the redundancy relation between them. This redundancy-based phonological incompatibility is implemented via licensing-failure: [low] fails to "license" [rtr] because lowness implies retraction (Ito, Mester and Padgett 1994).

This thesis explores three fundamental issues in the phonology and morphology of Ethiopian Semitic languages: mobile morphology, reduplication and epenthesis. In each chapter I draw on comparative evidence from different Ethiopian Semitic languages, an approach which provides greater insight into how the languages vary with respect to these three issues, and how the issues themselves are best analyzed. / The first issue is that of 'mobile morphology' a term I coin to describe the ability of a particular morphological category to be realized on various segments within a stem. The two major types in the South Ethio-Semitic languages are palatalization and labialization. I develop an analysis of palatalization in five different languages which relies on a hierarchy of preferred targets, along with a number of constraints regulating the appearance of palatalization within the stem. / Ethio-Semitic languages have several different types of reduplication. I draw a distinction between phonological and morphological reduplication and argue that phonological reduplication should be viewed as copying rather long-distance geminate structures created by spreading. I also examine the interaction of reduplication with mobile morphology and I present an analysis of double reduplication, showing how languages will avoid the creation of double reduplication relationships. / I develop an analysis of epenthesis which contrasts the behaviour of one set of languages which epenthesize following final consonant clusters with other languages which epenthesize between consonant clusters. I show that while all Ethio-Semitic languages follow the same general pattern, this may be overridden by templatic constraints and more importantly, by sonority considerations holding of adjacent syllables in coda-onset sequences. This last observation is important because it shows that while languages may on the whole violate heterosyllabic contact constraints, in particular circumstances, the constraints will be obeyed, giving rise to an emergence of the unmarked scenario.

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Thesis (M.A.)--George Mason University, 2007. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed Jan. 21, 2008). Thesis director: Adam Winsler. Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Psychology. Vita: p. 65. Includes bibliographical references (p. 58-64). Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Melbourne, Dept. of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, 2004. / Typescript (photocopy). Title on cover and spine: Topics in grammar and documentation etc... Includes bibliographical references (leaves [497]-508).