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Research Summary

Joel Rini, Professor of Spanish Linguistics and Philology, has been teaching courses and conducting research on the history of the Spanish language at the University of Virginia since receiving his Ph.D. in Romance Linguistics in 1987 from the University of Michigan. To date, he has published two books and over forty articles on Spanish historical grammar, a field whose purpose is to explain how a language that was once called “Latin” became the language that we know and love that is now called “Spanish.” He has taken advantage of the empirical method of Corpus Linguistics since its advent in the late-20th century to gather data for his studies to explain how the Spanish language has changed from its Latin origin to its 21st century manifestations. While many of his studies focus on the changes that have occurred from the twelfth to the end of the fifteenth century, the data gathered for his studies and the changes that he explains reach as far back as Old Latin (ca. 2nd century B.C.) and as far forward as the twenty-first century. 

Education

Ph.D., University of Michigan
M.A., University of Michigan
B.S., Kent State University

Publications

Books

Exploring the Role of Morphology in the Evolution of Spanish Amsterdam: John Benjamins, Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 179, 1999.

Motives for Linguistic Change in the Formation of the Spanish Object Pronouns. Newark, Delaware: Juan de la Cuesta, 1992.

Selected Articles:     

“On the Anomalous Future and Conditional of Spanish bendecir ‘to bless’ and maldecir ‘to curse’.” Romanische Forschungen 136 (2024): 179-203.

“The Preterite of Spanish andar: An ‘Unbiased’ History of non-Standard vs. Standard Forms.” Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 140 (2024): 139-155.

“When Nothing Does Something: The Proliferation and Triumph of the Third Person Plural Preterite Variant Ending -eron in Old and Early Modern Spanish.” Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 139 (2023): 42-74.

“On the Gender of Old Spanish árbol and Gender Change vs. Gender Maintenance of Latin ARBŎR in the Romance Languages.” Romanische Forschungen 134 (2022): 299-324

“A Reconsideration and Elaboration of a Previously Proposed Hypothesis for the Origin of the –y of Spanish soy, doy, voy, estoy.” Iberoromania 93 (2021): 137-155.

“Spanish quepo: The Untold Story.” Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie, 136 (2020): 730-748.

“A Morphological Factor in the History of the Irregular Future (and Conditional) of Spanish.” Studia Neophilologica 92 (2020): 111-123.

“Changing Genders: Linguistic Factors beyond Ambiguous Gender Marking and the Case of Spanish el arte vs. el ave and el hambre.” Bulletin of Spanish Studies 96:1 (2019): 1-16.

“The Paradoxical Survival of Spanish ¡Vamos! in the Face of Old Spanish ¡Vayamos! and the Loss of Old Spanish imos.” Iberoromania 88 (2018): 218-236.

“Are Some Spanish Nouns Truly Grammatical Hermaphrodites?” Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 132 (2016): 731-754.

“The Enigmatic Morphology of Spanish azúcar ‘sugar’ and the ‘New Feminine el.’” Iberoromania 80 (2014): 244-260.

"Un nuevo análisis de la evolución de los imperativos singulares irregulares di, haz, ve, sé, ven, ten, pon, sal, (val).” Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 130 (2014): 430-451.

“When Spanish h- Went Silent. How Do We Know?” Bulletin of Spanish Studies 87 (2010): 431-446.

“On the Formation of the Present Indicative Paradigm of Spanish ir and the Origin of vamos and vais.” Studies on Ibero-Romance Linguistics Dedicated to Ralph Penny. Eds. Roger Wright/Peter Ricketts. Delaware: Juan de la Cuesta (2005): 59-73.

“The Origin of Spanish entre tú y yo, ‘between you and me’: A Typological Parallel to English ‘between you and I’?” Diachronica 20 (2003): 139-165.

“The Extraordinary Survival of Spanish veía: Another Facet of Analogy Revealed.” Hispanic Review 69 (2001): 501-525.

“The Rise and Fall of Old Spanish 'Y’all': vos todos vs. vos otros.” Essays in Hispanic Linguistics Dedicated to Paul M. Lloyd. Eds. Blake, Robert J., Diana L. Ranson, and Roger Wright. Delaware: Juan de la Cuesta (1999): 209-221.

“The Formation of Old Spanish buey(s), bueyes, grey(s), greyes, ley(s), leyes, rey(s), reyes: A Morphophonological Analysis.” Hispanic Review 66 (1998): 1-19.

“The Origin of Spanish ser: A Phonosyntactic Analysis.” Romance Philology 50 (1997): 295-307.

“The Vocalic Formation of the Spanish Verbal Suffixes -áis/-ás, -éis/-és, -ois/-os, and -ís: A Case of Phonological or Morphological Change?” Iberoromania 44 (1996): 1-16.

“The Evolution of the Nature and Position of the Spanish Clitic Pronoun.” La corónica 24 (1995): 173-195.

“On the Evolution of Spanish cigüeña and the Blending of Multiple Variants.” Hispanic Review 61 (1993): 519-529.

“Metathesis of Yod and the Palatalization of Latin Medial /k’l/, /g’l/, /t’l/; /ks/, /ssj/,  /sj/; /kt/, /ult/  in Hispano- and Luso-Romance.” Linguistic Studies in Medieval Spanish. Eds. Harris-Northall, Ray and Thomas D. Cravens. Hispanic Seminary for Medieval Studies, University of Wisconsin, Madison (1991): 109-133.

“Dating the Grammaticalization of the Spanish Clitic Pronoun.” Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 106 (1990): 354-370.

“On the Chronology of Spanish conmigo, contigo, consigo, and the Interaction of Phonological, Syntactic, and Morphological Processes.” Hispanic Review 58 (1990): 503-512.

“A New Perspective on the Origin of le for les.” Journal of Hispanic Philology 12 (1988): 207-219.