Paul O’Neill

DPhil, Romance Linguistics

Linacre College

Paul completed his undergraduate degree in Classics and Spanish at the University of
Oxford before moving to Madrid to carry out the Spanish equivalent of a MPhil in
Lingüística Teórica y sus Aplicaciones at the Instituto Universitario Ortega y Gasset
affiliated to the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. He wrote his MPhil thesis on the
phonetics of the Andalusian variety of Spanish, concentrating specifically on the phonetic
realisations of the sibilant /s/ in syllable final position and its phonological and
morphological consequences. He is now back at Oxford having been awarded a full grant
from the AHRC in collaboration with a major Research Project entitled “Autonomous
Morphology in Diachrony: comparative evidence from Romance Languages.” His
research for his DPhil is primarily concerned with radically changing verbs in Castilian,
Asturian, Galician and Catalan, from both a synchronic and diachronic point of view.
Paul has published the following articles:
(2006) (in conjunction with A. Pamies & M. Amorós) “Esquemas entonativos
declarativos en el habla de almería” in Actas del II Jornadas Científicas del
Proyecto AMPER. Universidad de La Laguna, Tenerife.
(2005)“Final /s/ in Western Andalusian Spanish: the phonetic neutralization of a
phonological contrast.” Language design. University of Granada.
(2004) “La resolución del elemento sibilante en el andaluz” in Actas del V Congreso
Andaluz de Lingüística General: Homenaje al Profesor José Andrés de Molina Redondo.
Universidad de Granada.

In December 2006, he recently presented a paper in Madrid at the 36 Simposio de la

Sociedad Española de Lingüística entitled “La diptongación como un proceso
morfológico.”

Amongst other things Paul has been the Co-editor of Cuadernos de Lingüística del
Instituto Universitario Ortega y Gasset Volume 11 (2004). He is also a researcher and
collaborator in the Eastern Andalusian Spanish division of the AMPER Project (Atlas
Multimedia de la Prosodia del Espacio Románico), a Project concerning the intonation of
the romance languages. Paul is also a associated member to the Centre de Dialectologie
de la Université Stendhal-Grenoble, The Philological Society, The Anglo-Catalan Society
and La Sociedad Española de Lingüística.