This doctoral dissertation thesis pertains primarily, but not solely, to the field of general phonology and Romance phonology. The object of investigation are a number of sandhi phenomena attested in several Gallo-Romance varieties: French, Occitan, Walloon, and Franco-Provençal. The larger part of the postlexical phonological phenomena under investigation is pan-Romance and therefore they are not analyzed as isolated processes. They are interpreted with respect to their diatopic and diachronic variation, in other words, as specific manifestations of tendencies common to all Romance languages. The explanation for such common tendencies is sought in universal phonological principles and by the established methods of comparative analysis.Three large thematic parts can be distinguished in the thesis. The first part comprises the first two chapters and is theoretical in nature. Data from over 60 languages spoken in various parts of the world are presented and analyzed in this part. It also contains a critical review of the highly controversial existing usages of the term “sandhi” and attempts to offer a new original definition in the framework of prosodic phonology. The second part is devoted to concrete phonological analyses and comprises chapters III, IV and V. The sandhi processes in the Gallo-Romance language space are studied in details: liaison, phonosyntactic doubling and elision of vowels in initial syllables. The last thematic part, presented in chapter VI, is devoted to sociolinguistic observations. The three phenomena mentioned above are compared and analyzed with regard to the factors governing their variation, among them the orthographic tradition.
