User:Michel van der Hoek
I am currently a PhD student in Germanic Medieval Studies at the University of Minnesota (Twin Cities). I have specialized in historical linguistics and am researching the phenomenon of palatalization in Northwestern Germanic (Dutch, Frisian, German, English) both from a diachronic and dialectological (synchronic) perspective.
By training I am primarily a Germanic philologist, not a theoretical linguist. In my research I follow the school of Prague Structuralism, mainly to avoid getting involved in disputes between supporters of generative grammar (versions of lexical and cyclical phonology) and those of Optimality Theory, since their theoretical disputes add little to the philological work I prefer to focus on.
I also have experience with Old High German, Middle High German, Old and Middle Dutch, Old Norse, Old Saxon, Old and Middle English, and some with Gothic, and I am working on a project involving the Middle High German author Heinrich von Veldeke.
Apart from my academic interests, I follow American politics closely and since 2002, I have written a number of op-ed articles for a Dutch daily newspaper (Nederlands Dagblad) on this topic.