This dissertation is an examination of the characteristics of Phillis Wheatley's couplet poems in the areas of meter, rhyme, and syntax. The metrical analysis employs Morris Halle and Samuel Jay Keyser's theory of iambic pentameter, the rhyme examination considers the various factors involved in rhyme selection and rhyme function, and the syntactic analysis is conducted within the theoretical framework of a generative grammar similar to that proposed in Noam Chomsky's "Aspects of the Theory of Syntax" (1965). The findings in these three areas are compared with the characteristics of a representative sample of the works of Alexander Pope, the poet who supposedly exerted a strong influence on Wheatley, a black eighteenth century American poet.

This study examined The Margin Protection Program for Dairy’s impact on the “effective margins” or margins realized by dairy producers in various regions. Each selected margin and percentage of production history offered by the national policy was analyzed in a forecasting, national and regional manner. Couplet margins were simulated for fifteen regions from 2017 through 2020. Five scenarios were analyzed for the change in MPP’s effects under a 15%, 10%, and 5% drop in the price of milk as well as a 50% increase in the price of corn and a scenario where milk decreases 15% while corn prices simultaneously increases 25%. The results demonstrate that more than half of the regions have higher probabilities of triggering indemnities at every coverage level when compared to the US, MPP margin. Margins change in response to the policy effects, where lower coverage levels experience margin increase, and higher coverage levels experience margin decrease. In the US, MPP margin, risk reduction is observed at every coverage level. The program was found to decrease risk at most coverage levels, where higher shocks to the margin increased the protection offered by the program’s effects.

The old practice of separating the mother-baby-dyad was without measurable benefits to mothers or their infants. Evidence has shown that skin-to-skin care (SSC) prevents hypothermia and hypoglycemia, decreases crying during painful procedures in newborns, and reduces maternal anxiety, stress, and postpartum depression. Rooming-in care (RIC) has been linked to an increase in the rate of breastfeeding and mother-infant interaction, as well as a decrease in the infant morbidity rate. This project assessed the effect of an educational intervention to increase rates of SSC and RIC in an obstetric unit, in addition to measuring nurses' attitudes and barriers in relation to SSC and RIC. The obstetric nurses received educational content related to SSC and RIC based on Kotter's model of change. A pre and postintervention evaluation showed a significant increase in the rates of SSC and RIC from pretest of 10%, to posttest of 96%; and RIC from pretest of 10% to posttest of 92%. Using a Wilcoxon test, a significant difference was found from pretest to posttest for every subscale score of the Mother-Newborn Skin-to-Skin Contact Questionnaire and Nurse Attitudes and Barriers to nonseparation Scale (p < 0.001), with the exception of belief about obstacles for SSC, which yielded a nonsignificant change (p = 0.57). This DNP project led to changes in the organization's culture, including the closure of the well-baby nursery. This project promoted social change across the organization, in that the team health care providers delivered evidence-based, standardized, unbiased, and family-centered care to the mother-baby dyad.

Black theology and apartheid theology are theologies making use of an epitheton. The use to which the epitheton is put in these theologies is of crucial importance, that is, they are couplet theologies being used in a subjective genitive fashion. The question is whether the couplet becomes a theology of/concerning the epitheton or is it used in an objective genitive fashion. When the epitheton is used in the objective genitive sense it of necessity has to generate an epistemological break in order to distinguish it from orthodox theology. This in turn necessitates a conscientisation of a contextually predicated theology The theology becomes reductive. In this way an epitheton theology forming part of a couplet becomes attenuated and diverges from orthodox theology in the construction of its theology. This can lead to the espousal of heretical teachings. Conclusion: The conclusion arrived at is the objective genitive sense, that an epitheton theology, in for the purpose of advancing a particular secular base or pseudo-theological base for Christian society, once it has gained a life of its own, will lead to heresy unless erroneous or sinful teachings are confessed and repented of. / Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology / D. Th. (Systematic Theology)

Black theology and apartheid theology are theologies making use of an epitheton. The use to which the epitheton is put in these theologies is of crucial importance, that is, they are couplet theologies being used in a subjective genitive fashion. The question is whether the couplet becomes a theology of/concerning the epitheton or is it used in an objective genitive fashion. When the epitheton is used in the objective genitive sense it of necessity has to generate an epistemological break in order to distinguish it from orthodox theology. This in turn necessitates a conscientisation of a contextually predicated theology The theology becomes reductive. In this way an epitheton theology forming part of a couplet becomes attenuated and diverges from orthodox theology in the construction of its theology. This can lead to the espousal of heretical teachings. Conclusion: The conclusion arrived at is the objective genitive sense, that an epitheton theology, in for the purpose of advancing a particular secular base or pseudo-theological base for Christian society, once it has gained a life of its own, will lead to heresy unless erroneous or sinful teachings are confessed and repented of. / Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology / D. Th. (Systematic Theology)

"Endymion" è il traît d'union tra i juvenilia di Keats ("Poems", 1817) e i suoi lavori più conosciuti ("Lamia, Isabella ... and other Poems"). Per sua natura, è un'opera di transizione e quindi concede allo studioso un punto di vista privilegiato sullo sviluppo della poetica e della lingua di Keats. Inoltre, l'"Endymion" è l'opera keatsiana più aspramente contestata dalla critica romantica. Gli studiosi moderni hanno analizzato il problema alla luce di considerazioni socio-politiche, il mio lavoro mira invece ad un'analisi più strettamente linguistica. Ricostruisco il contesto linguistico del diciottesimo e diciannovesimo secolo al fine di spiegare il disagio dei recensori nei confronti di "Endymion". Sostengo che il prescrittivismo del Settecento nasce da una profonda ansia relativa alla lingua, causata dalle teorie di Locke. L'atteggiamento prescrittivista influenza la critica romantica e i critici di Keats in particolare, più di quanto potessero fare considerazioni di natura politica. Analizzo le peculiarità linguistiche e strutturali di "Endymion" al fine di provare che Keats elabora una 'poetica dell'incontrollabilità', una serie di strategie stilistiche e testuali, che violano le convenzioni linguistiche e narrative e che vengono quindi percepite come destabilizzanti e stranianti. / "Endymion" is the traît d’union between Keats’s juvenilia ("Poems", 1817)and his better known, and, conventionally, ’mature’ works ("Lamia, Is- abella ... and other Poems", 1820). By its nature, it is a transitional work, and thus gives the scholar special insight into the development of Keats’s poetics and idiom. Moreover, "Endymion" is the Keatsian work which most irritated and provoked contemporary critics; the two pieces of venomous invective it received in the periodical press of the time have become the stuff of scholarly legend. Recent scholarly work has analysed the language of "Endymion" in socio-political terms; my work focuses on more strictly linguistic concerns. I reconstruct the linguistic context of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in order to explain the reviewers’ unease with regard to "Endymion". I maintain that eighteenth-century prescriptivism arose from a deep-seated anxiety regarding language, Lockian in origin, and that the ensuing desire to stabilize and therefore control language informed Romantic criticism in general, and the criticism of Keats’s work in particular, more fundamentally than politics could or did. I analyse the imaginative and linguistic markers of "Endymion" in order to prove that Keats had elaborated a “poetics of uncontrollability”, a series of textual and stylistic strategies, which violated linguistic and narrative standards and were therefore perceived as unsettling.