This dissertation is a study of the phonology and morphology of the Huave language as spoken in San Francisco del Mar, Oaxaca State, Mexico. Huave is a language isolate, and the San Francisco del Mar dialect (one of four) is severely endangered, with almost all of its approximately 100 remaining fluent speakers over 65 years of age. The present study represents the first in-depth linguistic research on this dialect and is based on the author's fieldwork in the village.

The dissertation starts with a typological and sociolinguistic overview of Huave (Chapter 1). It then provides an analytical description of all phonological phenomena encountered in research to date (Chapter 2), paying special attention to the distribution and realization of palatalization, and to the fusion, dissimilation, and contextual deletion processes associated with glottal fricatives. The following chapters develop detailed and theoretically-oriented treatments of specific phonological phenomena. Chapter 3 proposes a unified analysis of various diphthongization processes and relates them to the realization of consonant palatalization, while also elaborating on the subsegmental representations of vowels and consonants. In Chapter 4, Correspondence theory is used to analyze unusual patterns of copy and blocking in the vowel harmony system.

Chapter 5 gives a morphological overview of Huave word classes and basic morphological structure. Chapter 6 focuses on verbal morphology, including verbal person, number, and tense/aspect inflection, and a diverse array of valence alternations. Finally, Chapter 7 provides a comprehensive picture of verbal affix ordering, which is complicated by "mobile affixes" that surface as prefixes or suffixes depending on context. The abstract hierarchical structure of the verb is worked out, and the linear placement of mobile affixes within these hierarchical constraints is argued to be phonologically conditioned.