We have been carrying out original empirical research in four areas: null subjects in Latin American Spanish, case loss in Balkan Slavic, grammatical gender loss in Middle English, and change in the distribution of subjunctive mood in Ibero-Romance. For Latin American Spanish, diachronic trends are masked by the nature of the data, but a major finding is that orality plays a key role in regulating the distribution of null subjects. We found that case loss in Balkan Slavic proceeds broadly along the lines predicted by case hierarchies, with cases higher in the hierarchy (e.g. instrumental) lost earlier and faster than cases lower in the hierarchy. As regards grammatical gender in Middle English, quantifiers and adjectives are affected by the change differently, and there is a strong regional element to the distribution. On the modelling side of the project, we have established a threshold for proportion of L2 learners at the population level in order for responsive features to be lost, and we have engaged with the literature on quantitative modelling of L2 learning effects in linguistic typology. More broadly, we have established and articulated a historical-corpus-based approach for testing questions of sociolinguistic typology in syntactic change. An article in EU Research magazine aimed to disseminate our hypotheses and early findings to a broader audience. Our results have been published in a variety of journal articles, and a book-length publication providing an overview of the project's approach and main findings has been provisionally accepted for publication with Language Science Press.
