The emergence of French phonology

The emergence of French phonology presents a computational framework for modeling the acquisition of sound patterns. It argues that in order to model this acquisition, not just phonological but also extra-phonological levels are necessary. To build on previous literature of phonological acquisition, especially in Optimality Theory, the framework is constraint-based. The thesis then presents a number of studies that utilize one such multi-level constraint based framework, Bidirectional Phonetics and Phonology, to simulate a number of scenarios in both first and second language acquisition. In this way, it demonstrates the viability of a multi-level and data-driven approach to phonology.