William Delaney O'Grady (born 1952)[1] is a professor in linguistics at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.
[2] He is also affiliated with the Center for Korean Studies at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa as a full member and the Island Studies Program at the University of Prince Edward Island as an adjunct professor and graduate faculty member.
O'Grady's work on syntactic theory and language acquisition focuses on emergentism, the idea that complex systems are best understood by investigating the interaction of more basic forces and propensities.
[3] Many of the points raised in this article were developed in more detail in his book Syntactic Carpentry: An Emergentist Approach to Syntax (2005), in which O'Grady shows how the defining properties of various core syntactic phenomena follow from the operation of a linear, efficiency-driven processor.
[5] O'Grady's research into Korean includes work on case-related phenomena as well as processing and acquisition.