The Emergence and Refinement of Grammars: perspectives from syntax and phonology

This research is set in the context of neo-emergentist and Three Factors approaches to language acquisition, particularly
those that assume a radically impoverished Universal Grammar. The proposed project would aim to probe further the
empirical feasibility, in language acquisition and also in synchrony and diachrony, of the hypothesis that linguistic
categories and formal features are emergent, being created as part of the acquisition process and being refined during it.
The project would start by providing additional empirical support for the preliminary findings in my MPhil thesis, where I
argue the acquisitional evidence is incompatible with models which take a fine-grained adult-like spine in Universal
Grammar to be the point of departure for child grammars. Subsequently, I would extend inquiry from syntactic acquisition
to phonology and diachrony. Recent literature (Klævik-Pettersen & Cournane, 2021; Vaux, 2022; Lee & Cournane, 2019)
has provided case-studies that align with the predictions in the theoretical approach here (which follows Bosch, 2022, in
progress). The second goal would thus be to detect similar examples in diachrony and phonology. Overall, this PhD
thesis would develop the neo-emergentist model outlined in my BA and MPhil theses (which draws on Biberauer, 2019,
and Biberauer & Roberts, 2015) and would aim to show that "Three Factors" models provide fresh insights into enduring
questions in linguistic theory, such as the ontological bases of language.