Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of philosophy.

The focus of this dissertation is the refinement of comparative metrical analysis, i.e. the comparison of related poetic forms with the goal to reconstruct the form of their common origin. By attempting the reconstruction of early medieval poetry, we can hope to gain a sense of the form of the oral poetic tradition prior to the introduction of writing into these literary cultures. However, the application of the Comparative Method of historical linguistics must be refined before it can be applied to poetic forms. This study uses three case studies to highlight the deficiencies in the Comparative Method as applied to poetry. These case studies, the first on the hypothesized Proto-Indo-European verse form, the second a comparison of metrical anomalies in Old English and Old Saxon verse, and the third a comparison of an Old Norse verse form, known as the drуttkvжtt, with certain metrical constructions in Old English and Old Saxon.

On the basis of a cross-linguistic study of more than 250 languages, this book brings to light several fascinating characteristics of pronouns. Dr Bhat argues that these words do not form a single category, but rather two different categories called 'personal pronouns' and 'proforms'.

This collection of readings is complementary to Introduction to Integrational Linguistics (Language & Communication Library, Vol.17), but can be used independently. It brings together for the first time 24 key papers in integrational linguistics, and is intended to serve as a basic reading list for students and others making the first acquaintance with the subject.

Language Acquisition has been a much-disputed territory over which the conflicting claims of cognitive scientists, psychologists and linguists have long been fought. While for years each discipline has kept within its own theoretical frameworks, a fruitful recent development has been the increase in cross-disciplinary fertilisation of ideas between researchers of different orientations.

This book presents an exhaustive treatment of a long-standing problem of Proto-Indo-European and Italic philology: the development of the Proto-Indo-European voiced aspirates in the ancient languages of Italy. In so doing it tackles a central issue of historical linguistics: the plausibility of explanations for sound change.