Dr Paul O'Neill
Mphil (DEA), Dphil (Oxon)
School of Languages and Cultures
Senior Lecturer
+44 114 222 4401
Full contact details
School of Languages and Cultures
Jessop West
1 Upper Hanover Street
Sheffield
S3 7RA
- Profile
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Paul completed his undergraduate degree in Classics and Spanish at the University of Oxford (Brasenose College). He then moved to Madrid to carry out the Spanish equivalent of a MPhil in Lingüística Teórica y sus Aplicaciones at the Instituto Universitario de Investigación Ortega y Gasset affiliated to the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. He wrote his MPhil thesis on the phonetics of the Andalusian variety of Spanish.
He returned to Oxford (Linacre College) and completed a DPhil on 'The Ibero-Romance Verb: allomorphy and the notion of the morphome' in relation with a Research Project entitled "Autonomous Morphology in Diachrony: comparative evidence from Romance Languages".
Before working for the University of Sheffield, Paul was a University Teacher in Hispanic Linguistics at the University of Liverpool
- Research interests
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Paul's research focuses on variation and change in the Ibero-Romance Languages (Spanish, Catalan Portuguese, Galician, Austrian, Aragonese) and specifically on the varieties of Portuguese and Spanish spoken around the world. He is interested in detailing and explaining historical and current changes in these languages and using his data to address the big questions in linguistic theory – namely, how language is mentally represented and the interplay between storage and computation.
He maintains that language should not be studied as a self-contained system without reference to its usage, history and structure and studied in isolation to other human cognitive and developmental skills. He views grammar as emergent and shaped by both internal and external linguistic factors. He is particularly interested in Word-and-Pattern models of Morphology and how such models can help in explaining linguistic change.
Paul is currently writing two books which are under contract with Oxford University Press. The Oxford History of Spanish Morphology, and, The Oxford History of Portuguese and Galician Morphology.
Paul is keen to explore ways in which his research can have a tangible impact upon policies, individuals and societies. He is currently developing the following project on language, language teaching, education and linguistic prejudice.
Read about his funded project on historical linguistics and linguistic prejudice in Brazil
- Publications
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Journal articles
- Language and education in Brazil : linguistic structural problems and their historical origins. Modern Languages Open, 2022(1).
- Ideological and Theoretical Considerations to Postcolonial Education in the Lusophone Countries. Modern Languages Open, 1.
- O preconceito linguístico e o preconceito racial: comparações, contrastes e soluções antropofágicas. Falange Miúda, 5(2).
- Racial and linguistic prejudice in Brazil: comparisons, contrasts and anthropophagic solutions. Falange Miúda, 5(2), 1-30. View this article in WRRO
- Near-synonymy in morphological structures. Languages in Contrast, 18(1), 6-34. View this article in WRRO
- The Origin and Spread of Velar Allomorphy in the Spanish Verb: A Morphomic Approach. Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 92(5), 489-518.
- The morphome in constructive and abstractive models of morphology. Morphology.
- New perspectives on the effects of yod in ibero-romance. Bulletin of Spanish Studies, 89(5), 665-697.
- The Evolution of the pretérito y tiempos afines in Ibero-Romance. Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 88(8), 851-878.
- A theoretical explanation of defective verbs in the Spanish language. Boletin de la Real Academia Espanola(302), 265-289.
- On morphomic defectiveness: Evidence from the Romance languages of the Iberian Peninsula. Proceedings of the British Academy, 163, 103-124.
- Defective verbs in the Spanish language. Boletin de la Real Academia Espanola(300).
- Utterance final /S/ in Andalusian Spanish. The phonetic neutralization of a phonological contrast. Language Design, 7, 151-166.
- Alternativas vocálicas en el presente de los verbos en "-ir". Un análisis desde la morfología autónoma. Revista de Historia de la Lengua Española(6), 87-129.
- Linguistic prejudice and discrimination in Brazilian Portuguese and beyond. Journal of Language and Discrimination, 3(1), 32-62.
- “Los gerundios ‘analógicos’ en la historia del español”. Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica (NRFH), 61(1), 1-1.
- Variação, mudança e preconceito linguístico: fenômenos da língua portuguesa atual e antiga. Falange Miúda, 5(2).
Chapters
- Velar Allomorphy in Ibero-Romance: roots, endings and clashes of morphomes. In Bouzouita M, Sitaridou I & Pato E (Ed.), Studies in Historical Ibero-Romance Morphosyntax. (pp. 13-46). John Benjamins View this article in WRRO
- Lexicalism, the Principles of Morphology-free Syntax and Syntax-free Morphology In Stump G & Hippisley A (Ed.), Cambridge Handbook of Morphology Cambridge: CUP.
- Similar and differing patterns of allomorphy in the Spanish and Portuguese verbs, Portuguese-Spanish Interfaces (pp. 175-202). John Benjamins Publishing Company
- The Notion of the Morphome, Morphological AutonomyPerspectives From Romance Inflectional Morphology (pp. 70-94). Oxford University Press
- On Morphomic Defectiveness: Evidence from the Romance Languages of the Iberian Peninsula1, Defective Paradigms British Academy
- Morphologically ‘autonomous’ structures in the Romance languages In Gardani F & Loporcaro M (Ed.), The Oxford Encyclopedia of Romance Linguistics.
- Sandhi phenomena In Ledgeway A & Maiden M (Ed.), Cambridge Handbook of Romance Linguistics
- Autonomy of Morphology In Maiden M & Ledgeway A (Ed.), Cambridge Handbook of Romance Linguistics
Conference proceedings papers
- La resolución del elemento sibilante en el andaluz. Homenaje al Molina Redondo, Vol. 1 (pp 513-523). Granda:
- Language and education in Brazil : linguistic structural problems and their historical origins. Modern Languages Open, 2022(1).
- Talks and Presentations
*Jan. 2019 El cambio lingüístico, el prejuicio lingüístico y el rol de la investigación lingüística. Presented at the Department of Spanish, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
*Jan. 2019 Morphologization and the boundary between morphology and phonology. Presented at the Department of Linguistics, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
*Dec. 2018 Linguistic Prejudice and the role of linguistic research in social change: the case of Andalusian Spanish and Experimental Phonetics. Presented at the University of Bristol, United Kingdom.
*Nov. 2018 Language and identity and linguistic prejudice. Presented at the INPRINT event at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil.
August 2018 La importancia de la historia de la lengua para la teoría lingüística. Presented at the Congreso Internacional de la Historia de la Lengua Española in Lima, Perú.
May 2018 '/s/-aspiration in Andalusian Spanish: An experimental study of four cities'. Presented at Investigando las hablas andaluzas:New approaches to Andalusian Spanish. Innsbruck, Austria.
*March 2018 'Novos avanços em Linguística Histórica e no estudo da mudança morfológica'. Presented at a training workshop on Linguistic Prejudice & New Advances is Historical Linguistics at UNESP (Araraquara), Brazil
*March 2018 'O preconceito linguístico no Brasil. Presented at a training workshop on Linguistic Prejudice & New Advances is Historical Linguistics at UNESP (Araraquara), Brazil
*March 2018 'Concordâncias e Discordâncias no paradigma verbal'. Presented at a training workshop on Linguistic Prejudice & New Advances is Historical Linguistics at UNESP (Araraquara), Brazil
*March 2018 'Métodos experimentais para o estudo da mudança fonológica'. Presented at a training workshop on Linguistic Prejudice & New Advances is Historical Linguistics at UNESP (Araraquara), Brazil
*March 2018 'Estudo de casos de mudanças fonológicas'. Presented at a training workshop on Linguistic Prejudice & New Advances is Historical Linguistics at UNESP (Araraquara), Brazil
*March 2018 'Verbos defectivos no Português Brasileiro'. Presented at UNESP (Araraquara), Brazil
*July 2017 ‘La hipótesis de la integridad léxica, la interfaz morfología-sintaxis y lo puramente morfológico’. Presented at a workshop on the relationship between Morphology and Syntax entitled ‘Variación en la interfaz morfología-sintaxis’ at the Universitat de Girona, Spain.
July 2017 ‘Perspectivas novas para a história do verbo português’. Presented at IV Congresso Internacional de Linguística Histórica, Universidade de Lisboa.
April 2017 ‘El cambio fonético en el español: el caso de la aspiración’. Presented at the VI Joranadas Internacionales de Lingüística Hispánica. Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal.
*March 2017 ‘Perspectivas novas para a historia da morfologia galega-portuguesa’. Presented at the Grupo de Morfologia Histórica do Português, Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil.
*March 2017 ‘Temas en lingüística española’. Presented at the Departamento de Letras Estrangeiras Modernas, Universidade Federal Fluminense, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
*March 2017 ‘La representación mental del léxico y el cambio lingüístico’. Presented at the Department of Spanish Phililogy at the Universidad de Concepción, Chile.
*March 2017 ‘Los cambio fonéticos en el español: pasado, presente y futuro’. Presented at the Department of Spanish Philology at the Universidad de Concepción, Chile.
*March 2017 ‘¿Existen los morfemas y los fonemas?’. Presented at the Department of Linguistics and Spanish Philology at the Universidad Católica de Chile.
April 2016 ‘Elementos similares da morfologia entre a morfologia do portugues e do espanhol’. Presented at the V Jornadas de Lingüística Hispánica. Centros y periferias, Universidade de Lisboa.
April 2016 ‘Teaching Medieval and Early-Modern Spanish: the problem of the texts’. Presented at the Association of Hispanists of Great Britain and Ireland, University of Northumbria.
Jan. 2016 ‘Aspiration: the new YOD!’. Presented at the Romance Linguistics Seminar, University of Cambridge, UK.
Dec. 2015 ‘Defectivity in Ibero-Romance: why Catalans can abolish constitutions but Spanish and Portuguese speakers can’. Presented at Iberocon 2015, University of Ghent, Belgium.
*May. 2015 ‘Lecciones de la morfología histórica para la teoría morfológica’. Presented at the University of Girona.
April 2015 ‘Spanish Linguistics and Teaching Spanish Pronunciation’. Presented at the Annual Conference of Hispanists of Great Britain and Ireland, University of Exeter, UK.
*March 2015 ‘Diachronic contributions to synchronic theories of morphology: evidence from Romance verb morphology.’ Presented at the Romance Linguistics Seminar, University of Oxford, UK.
*Feb. 2015. ‘Sound change in Andalusian Spanish’. Presented to the Departement of Spanish and Portuguese, University of California, Berkeley. USA.
Feb. 2013 'Defective Verbs in Russian, Spanish and Portuguese.' Presented at the School of Languages and Cultures Research Seminar Series (University of Sheffield).
Sept 2012 'Nuevas perspectivas sobre los efectos de la yod desinencial en el verbo español'. Presented at the IX Congreso Internacional de la Historia de la Lengua Española, Cádiz, Spain.
Sept. 2012 'Quisiendo por queriendo: Condicionamiento fonológico y cambio morfológico en los gerundios "analógicos"del español' Presented with Enrique Pato (Université de Montréal) at the IX Congreso Internacional de la Historia de la Lengua Española, Cádiz, Spain.
April 2012 'Yod or no Yod: Metaphony and Allomorphy in the Ibero-Romance Verb.' Presented at The 2nd Cambridge Colloquium on the Histories of the Ibero-Romance Languages. Queen's College, Cambridge, UK.
April 2012 'History repeating itself: changes in Southern Peninsular Spanish pronunciation.' Presented at the annual conference of the Association of Hispanists of Great Britain and Ireland, Sterling, Scotland.
Jan. 2012 'Morphological complexity and the morphome.'Presented at the International Conference on Morphological Complexity, British Academy, London (organised by the Surrey Morphology Group)
July 2011 'The effect of yod on the verb in Ibero-Romance and autonomous morphological structures.' Presented at the 20th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Osaka, Japan.
July 2011 'Differences between morphemic and morphomic structure.' Presented at the 20th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Osaka, Japan.
Oct. 2010 `The morphome and morphosyntactic features´ Presented at the Second Oxford Workshop on Romance Verb Morphology Oxford, U.K.
Jan. 2010 `New aspirated occlusive phonemes in Andalusian Spanish.´ Presented at the XXXVIII Romance Linguistic Seminar, Cambridge, U.K.
March. 2009`What do they speak in the South of Spain? Spanish? Andalusian Spanish? Just Andaluz´. Presented at the SOCLAS Romance Linguistics Seminar, University of Liverpool, U.K.
Feb. 2009 `Mind the Gap: defectivity in the verbal paradigm. A corpus based account´. Presented at the Language Research Seminar, University of Liverpool, U.K.
Nov. 2008.`Los verbos defectivos en el Ibero-Romance´. Presented at the XIII Forum of Iberian Studies, Oxford, U.K.
Aug. 2008 `Morphomes, Morphemes and Morphological Segmentation: Evidence from Ibero-Romance´. Presented at the First Oxford Workshop on Romance Verb Morphology Oxford, U.K.
May. 2008 `The Rise, Fall and Rebirth of the Morphome in Ibero-Romance´ Presented at the Oxford Romance Linguistic Seminar, Oxford, U.K.
April 2008 `On Morphomic Defectiveness´. Presented with Martin Maiden at the Defective Paradigms Workshop at the British Academy, London, U.K.
April 2008`El origen y propagación del diptongo [je] en el pretérito y tiempos afines´. Presented at the VIII Congreso Nacional del AJHILE, Barcelona, Spain.
Feb. 2008 `La fonética de la /s/ implosiva andaluza en el interior de palabra´. Presented at the IV Conferencia de Fonética Experimental, Granada, Spain.
Feb. 2008 `Esquemas entonativos de frase declarativa en el habla de Jaén´. Presented with Antonio Pamiés and Mari Cruz Amorós at the IV Conferencia de Fonética Experimental, Granda, Spain
Jan. 2008 `The Development of the Castilian Desinences for `el pretérito y tiempos afines´ a Comparative View from Ibero-Romance.´ Presented at the XXXVI Romance Linguistic Seminar, Cambridge, U.K.
Aug. 2007 `Imperative Morphology in Diachrony: evidence from the Romance Languages´. Presented with Martin Maiden and Andrew Swearingen at the XVIII International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Montreal, Canada.
Dec. 2006 `La diptongación como proceso morfológico´. Presented at the 36 Simposio de la Sociedad Española de Lingüística. Madrid, Spain.
Dec. 2004 `La resolución del elemento sibilante en el andaluz´. Presented at the V Congreso Andaluz de Lingüística General. Homenaje a Molina Redondo. Granada, Spain