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Teaching areas.

History and structure of German
Comparative German linguistics
Historical linguistics
Phonology
Medieval literature

Research areas.

My primary area of research and publication is historical phonology of the Germanic languages. This work is comparative and integrates modern dialect data into historical reconstruction. I am also interested in other areas of research, including the relationship of standard language and dialect and Germanic etymology. I have focused on a number of topics.

One area is consonant strength, a central problem in Germanic phonology and phonetics. I have discussed the phonological content of fortis/lenis in the modern standard Germanic languages and examined consonant lenition in High German, Low German, Danish, and Frisian dialects. Synchronically, strength is best understood as a metaphor and we are better off dealing with a constellation of phonological features: voice, aspiration, and length, which contribute to the opposition of consonants differently in the various word positions. Lenition occurs only in medial and final position, as a reaction to the lengthening of accented vowels, which establishes complementary length in most Germanic dialects. Consonants undergoing various stages of weakening according to the strength hierarchy: stop > fricative > semivowel > vowel. Voice and gemination in obstruents are separate dimensions of strength. Lenition gradually unravels the obstruent system of the dialects in which it occurs, some going further than others. Part of this work has discussed the relationship of consonant strength to vowel lengthening in open syllables and West Germanic gemination. Currently I am working on a comparative study of all the lenitions.

Another focus is consonant shifts in the Germanic languages. I have treated the First or Germanic consonant shift, the High German shift, and the shifts in Danish and Icelandic, and the Partial shift in English, Low German, Swedish, and Norwegian in a comparative light. As a result I have developed a theory of consonant shifts. All of the younger, geographically restricted shifts may be considered variants of the Second Consonant Shift and all employ the same phonological mechanism. The shifts are in essence the spirantization and lengthening of consonants in accented syllables. Here I work with a four-stage model of spirantization (stop > aspirate > affricate > fricative). The stops give up some of their strength in order to lengthen. Weakening is thus an on-going trend in the Germanic languages, which includes the lenitions and the shifts. The shifts, along with other changes like umlaut, diphthongizations, open syllable lengthening, and gemination, may be considered part of the Germanic concentration of phonological information on the root syllable. Part of my research in this area was an attempt to resolve the controversy of Ausbreitung and Entfaltung in the High German consonant shift.

The last area of research is diphthongs and vowel shifts in the Germanic languages. I began this work a number of years ago and am now taking it up again. My first published article in this area was on Germanic diphthongs in Anglo-Frisian. My work will include a survey of modern dialects of the Germanic dialects and a historical study of diphthongs and the various vowel shifts in Germanic. Among other changes, I will examine Old English breaking and related phenomena, the Great Vowel Shift, Old High German and New High German diphthongizations and monopthongizations, and the Scandinavian loss of diphthongs.

Major publications.

Books and edited books:

Consonant Strength in Upper German Dialects. NOWELE Supplement Volumes 10. Odense: Odense University Press, 1994.

Germanic Studies in Honor of Anatoly Liberman. Ed. with Martha Berryman Mayou and Marvin Taylor. North-Western European Language Evolution 31/32. Odense: Odense University Press, 1997.

Lautverschiebungen in den germanischen Sprachen. Germanistische Bibliothek 23. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2005.

Articles:

"Consonant Lenition in the Scandinavian Languages." Svenska landsmåloch svenskt folkliv (1993): 7-17.

"Fortis and Lenis in Standard German." Leuvense Bijdragen 83 (1994): 31-45.

"Consonant Lenition in German Dialects." North-Western European Language Evolution 24 (1994): 67-90.

"From Voice to Length in High German Consonants." Interdisciplinary Journal for Germanic Linguistics and Semiotic Analysis 2 (1997): 257-80.

"The Correlation of Voice in Germanic." North-Western European Language Evolution 35 (1999): 115-40.

"The Mechanism of Consonant Shifts in Germanic." Yazyk i rechevaya: deyatel 'nost. Language and Speech. Journal of the Linguistic Society of St. Petersburg 2 (1999): 186-94.

"The Icelandic Consonant Shift in its Germanic Context." Arkiv för nordisk filologi 116 (2001): 117-33.

"On the Development of Germanic Consonants: The Danish Shift and the Danish Lenition." Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 124 (2002): 199-232.

"The Voicing of Fricatives in West Germanic and the Partial Consonant Shift." Folia Linguistica Historica 24 (2003): 111-152.

Recent presentations.

"The Voicing of Fricatives in West Germanic." Forum for Germanic Language Studies / Society for Germanic Linguistics Joint Conference, London, England, January 2003.

"Der Mechanismus von Lautverschiebungen im Germanischen: Das Zeugnis vom Skandinavischen und vom Hochdeutschen." Phonologischer Wandel in den germanischen Sprachen: Die Lautverschiebungen. Kolloquium des Zentrums für Mittelalterstudien, Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg, Germany, May 2003.

"Entwicklungstendenzen im germanischen Konsonantismus." Nordeuropa-Institut and Institut für Deutsche Sprache und Linguistik, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany, 5 June 2003.

“Scandinavian Consonant Shifts.” Michail Ivanovich Steblin-Kamenskij Centennial Conference. Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences and the Philological Faculty, St. Petersburg State University, Russia, September 2003.

“Ausbreitung oder Entfaltung? The Spread and Gradation of the High German Consonant Shift Reconsidered.” Germanic Linguistics Annual Conference-10, Ann Arbor, MI, 2004.

“Lenition and Vowel Lengthening in Germanic.” 17th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Madison, WI, 2005.