Fernández Cuesta, Julia María2025-07-172025-07-172025-04-08León Prol, M. (2025). Dental Instability in Northern Middle English: Evidence for Lenition and Fortition. (Tesis Doctoral Inédita). Universidad de Sevilla, Sevilla.https://hdl.handle.net/11441/175395The aim of this thesis is to assess whether processes of fortition (‘strengthening’) and lenition (‘weakening’), both of which affect dental fricatives in contemporary varieties of English, are already attested in northern Middle English. To this end, the orthographic representations of dental consonants have been analysed, with a particular focus on dental fricatives, from the evidence found in the Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English (LAEME). The 12 texts analysed from LAEME (Cumberland, Durham, Lancashire, City of York, East Riding of Yorkshire, West Riding of Yorkshire, North Riding of Yorkshire) showed a significant variety of spellings for historical /t, d, ?/ and [ð], as exemplified in the Phonographic Profiles created for each text. The data show that, although lenition is generally more frequent than fortition, processes of fortition regarding dental fricatives are more common than lenition in northern Middle English.application/pdf267 p.engAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internationalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/info:eu-repo/semantics/doctoralThesisinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess