Lotte Sommerer

PD Dr. Lotte Sommerer

Assistant Professor
English Linguistics | Chair of Prof. Kortmann

lotte.sommerer@anglistik.uni-freiburg.de
☎ +49 761 203-3321

R 4222 | KG IV

she/her

office hour: best by appointment

CV

Lotte Sommerer is a researcher in the field of English linguistics. After studying English and German at the University of Vienna and Toronto, she defended her PhD thesis on nominal determination and article emergence in Old English in 2011 at the University of Vienna. After holding a ph2 professorship at the Kirchlich-Pädagogische Hochschule Wien/Krems from 2013 to 2016, she returned to the University of Vienna and was a member of the English Department from 2016 to 2021. Since March 2021 she has been working as an assistant professor at the English Department of the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität of Freiburg. There she recieved her Venia Legendi (Habilitation) in July 2022.

Lotte Sommerer is a historical, functional-cognitive linguist who works on morphosyntactic variation and change in Modern English, Middle English and Old English. She subscribes to a usage-based, constructional theory of morphosyntax (CCxG) that does full justice to functional and cognitive constraints, takes account of variation and gives equal weight to form and function in order to explain the shape of and changes in a linguistic system.

Together with Stefan Hartmann (University of Düsseldorf) she is the Editor-in-Chief of the open acess online journal Constructions https://constructions.journals.hhu.de/index

Orchid ID: 0000-0001-5170-5308

RESEARCH INTERESTS

• Usage-based, Cognitive Construction Grammar (UCCxG)
• Cognitive Linguistics
• Grammaticalization, Constructionalization & Subjectification
• Lexicon-Grammar Interface
• Linguistic Gradience & Categorization
• Noun Phrase Structure
• Old English, Early Modern English

EDUCATION

EMPLOYMENT

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

MONOGRAPHS, COLLECTIONS & SPECIAL ISSUES

• Sommerer, Lotte. (2018). Article Emergence in Old English. A Constructionalist Perspective. [TIEL series, Vol. 99]. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110541052
• Sommerer, Lotte & Stefan Hartmann (eds.). (2023). 35 Years of Constructions, Special Issue of Constructions 15 (1) https://doi.org/10.24338/cons-.0
• Sommerer, Lotte & Evelien Keizer (eds.). (2022). English Noun Phrases from a Functional-Cognitive Perspective: Current Issues. [Studies in Language Companion Series]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.221
• Sommerer Lotte & Elena Smirnova (eds.). (2020). Nodes and Networks in Diachronic Construction Grammar. [CAL, Vol. 27]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/cal.27
• Barðdal, Jóhanna; Smirnova, Elena, Sommerer, Lotte & Gildea, Spike (eds.). (2015). Diachronic Construction Grammar. [CAL, Vol. 18]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.https://doi.org/10.1075/cal.18

JOURNAL & COLLECTION ARTICLES

• Sommerer, Lotte & Perek, Florent. (submitted). 'Definiteness and verb meaning: investigating the definiteness profile of English verbs'. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory
• Sommerer, Lotte & Zehentner, Eva. (accepted). 'Go to church or die in prison: PPs with bare institutional nouns in the history of English'. Folia Linguistica Historica
• Sommerer, Lotte & Bohmann, Axel. (submitted). Not that tight a family - BIG MESS constructions in Present Day English. English Language and Linguistics
• Sommerer, Lotte & Perek, Florent (forthc.). 'Some as an indefinite article in Present Day English: a case of paradigmatization and constructional competition' to appear in Special Issue of Functions of Language
• Bohmann, Axel & Sommerer, Lotte. (forthc.). 'Quantitative methods and the history of English'. In Hickey, R. (ed.). New Cambridge History of the English Language, Vol II. Kytö, M. & Smitterberg, E. (eds.). Documentation, sources of data and modelling. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Sommerer, Lotte & Van de Velde, Freek. (forthc.). 'Constructional networks'. In Fried, M. & Nikiforidou, K. (eds.). The Cambridge Handbook of Construction Grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Sommerer, Lotte & Stefan Hartmann. (2023). Reflecting on 35 Years of Constructions, Introduction to Special Issue of Constructions 15 (1).
• Sommerer, Lotte. (2023). 'If that's what she said, then that's what she said: an analysis of pleonastic conditionals in English' Corpus Pragmatics. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41701-023-00148-9
• Sommerer, Lotte. (2022). So great a desire’: investigating the BIG MESS construction in Early Modern English. Journal of Historical Syntax, 6(2), 1-34. https://doi.org/10.18148/hs/2022.v6i2.129
• Sommerer, Lotte (2022). Review of Yolanda Fernández-Pena. (2020). Reconciling Synchrony, Diachrony and Usage in Verb Number Agreement with Complex Collective Subjects. London: Routledge. In Research in Corpus Linguistics, 10(2), 175-186.
• Sommerer, Lotte. (2022). 'Day to day and night after night: temporal NPN constructions in Present Day English'. In Sommerer, L. & Keizer, E. (eds.). English Noun Phrases from a Functional-Cognitive Perspective: Current Issues. [Studies in Language Companion Series]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 364-394.https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.221.10som
• Keizer, Evelien & Sommerer, Lotte. (2022). 'Major trends in research on the English NP'. In Sommerer, L. & Keizer, E. (eds.). English Noun Phrases from a Functional-Cognitive Perspective: Current Issues. [Studies in Language Companion Series]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1-23.https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.221.int
• Sommerer, Lotte & Baumann, Andreas. (2021). 'Of absent mothers, strong sisters and peculiar daughters: the constructional network of English NPN constructions'. Cognitive Linguistics, 32(1), 97-131. https://doi.org/10.1515/cog-2020-0013
• Sommerer, Lotte & Hofmann, Klaus. (2021). 'Constructional competition and network reconfiguration: investigating sum(e) in Old, Middle and Early Modern English'. English Language and Linguistics, 25(1), 1-33. https://doi.org/10.1017/S136067431900039X
• Smirnova, Elena & Sommerer, Lotte. (2020). 'The nature of the node and the network: open questions in Diachronic Construction Grammar'. In Sommerer, L. & Smirnova, E. (eds.). Nodes and Networks in Diachronic Construction Grammar. [CAL, Vol. 27]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1-42. https://doi.org/10.1075/cal.27.int
• Sommerer, Lotte. (2020). 'Constructionalization, constructional competition and constructional death: investigating the demise of Old English POSS DEM constructions'. In Sommerer, L. & Smirnova, E. (eds.). Nodes and Networks in Diachronic Construction Grammar. [CAL, Vol. 27]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 69-103. https://doi.org/10.1075/cal.27.02som
• Sommerer, Lotte. (2020). 'Why we avoid the ‘Multiple Inheritance’ Issue in Usage-based Cognitive Construction Grammar'. Belgian Journal of Linguistics, 34, 320-331.  https://doi.org/10.1075/bjl.00056.som
• Sommerer, Lotte. (2019). Review of Van Goethem, Kristel, Muriel Norde, Evie Coussé & Gudrun Vanderbauwhede (eds.). (2018). Category Change from a Constructional Perspective. [Constructional Approaches to Language, Vol. 20]. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins. In Constructions and Frames,11(2), 317-333.
• Baumann, Andreas & Sommerer, Lotte. (2018). 'Linguistic diversification as a long-term effect of asymmetric priming: an adaptive dynamic approach'. Language Dynamics and Change,8(2), 253-296.
• Sommerer, Lotte. (2016). 'Investigating the acquisition of perfective aspect in the German EFL classroom – a constructional sketch'. In Lindner, D.; Beer R.; Gabriel, S. & Krobath, T. (eds.). Dialog Forschung. Forschungsband 2015. [Schriften der Kirchlichen Pädagogischen Hochschule Wien/Krems, Band 12]. Wien/Berlin: LIT VERLAG.
• Sommerer, Lotte. (2015). 'The influence of constructions in grammaticalization: revisiting category emergence and the development of the definite article in English'. In Barðdal, J.; Smirnova, E.; Sommerer, L. & Gildea, S. (eds.). Diachronic Construction Grammar. [CAL, Vol. 18]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 107-138. https://doi.org/10.1075/cal.18.04som
• Sommerer, Lotte. (2012a). 'Analogical Transfer in Old English syntax. Article emergence caused by pattern recognition and transfer'. In Schendl, H.; Markus, M. & Coelsch-Foisner, S. (eds.). Transfer in English Studies. [Austrian Studies in English, Vol. 100]. Vienna: Braunmüller, 259-285.
• Sommerer, Lotte. (2012b). 'Investigating the emergence of the definite article in Old English: about categorization, gradualness and constructions'. Folia Linguistica Historica, 33, 175-213.

SELECTED PRESENTATIONS

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  ICLC 16 (International Cognitive Linguistics Conference). 7 ‒ 11 August 2023, Düsseldorf, Germany. Paper (together with Florent Perek): Definiteness and verb meaning: Investigating the definiteness profile of English verbs
• ICCG 12 (International Conference on Construction Grammar). 19 ‒ 21 May 2023, Prag, Czech Republic Paper: If that's what she said, then that's what she said - A usage-based, constructional analysis of pleonastic conditionals in English
• BICLCE 9 (Biennial International Conference on the Linguistics of Contemporary English). 23 ‒ 25 September 2022, Ljubljana, Slowenia (accepted to workshop ‘Today’s innovations, tomorrow’s conventions’ by David Lorenz & David Tizón-Couto). Paper: Investigating some as an indefinite article in PDE
• ICHL25 (International Conference on Historical Linguistics). 1 – 5 August 2022, Oxford, UK. Paper (together with Eva Zehentner): go to church or die in prison: tracing V-PP combinations with bare institutional nouns in the history of English
• ICAME 43, (Annual Conference of the International Computer Archive for Modern and Medieval English), Cambridge, UK. Paper (together with Florent Perek): Direct object definiteness and verb meaning: a corpus-based investigation
• DGKL9 (9th International Conference of the German Cognitive Linguistics) 1 – 4 March 2022, Erfurt, Germany Paper: Not as tight a family: A constructional network sketch of BIG MESS constructions in English
• ICCG 11 (11th International Conference on Construction Grammar). 18 – 20 August 2021, Antwerpen, Belgium (accepted to workshop ‘Paradigmatic relations in the constructicon’ by Martin Hilpert & Jenny Audring). Paper: Of absent mothers and strong sisters: Local differences in constructional network architecture
• ICEHL 21 (International Conference on English Historical Linguistics). 7 – 11 June 2021, Leiden, Belgium. Paper: ‘So great a desire’ - a diachronic investigation of the BIG MESS construction
• Invited Speaker to Department of Languages and Literatures, Research Group, University of Gothenburg, 21 January 2021, Gothenburg, Sweden. Paper: Of absent mothers and peculiar daughters – the constructional network of English NPN constructions
• 7th UK CLC (Cognitive Linguistics Conference). 27 – 30 July 2020, Birmingham, UK. Paper: How important a piece of the puzzle? A usage-based investigation of the BIG MESS construction
• Invited Speaker to the Cognitive Research Group, School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, University of Edinburgh, 3 September 2020, Edinburgh, UK. Paper: Open questions in Diachronic Construction Grammar
• SLE 52 (Societa Linguistica Europaea). 21 ‒ 24 September 2019, Leipzig, Germany. Paper: How to model paradigmatic knowledge in DCxG: the case of Middle English som(e) and its development into an indefinite article' (invited to workshop by Gabriele Diewald)
• ICLC 15 (International Cognitive Linguistics Conference). 6 – 11 August 2019, Nishinomiya, Japan. Paper a): Let’s talk face to face about N-P-N constructions in Contemporary American English. Paper b) (together with Eva Zehentner): A convent of sisters without a mother superior? – Discussing abstract nodes in the constructional network
• ENP2019. 11 – 13 July 2019, Vienna, Austria. Workshop organization (together with Evelien Keizer): The English Noun Phrase 2019: synchronic and diachronic perspectives. Paper: Let’s talk face to face about N-P-N constructions in English
• ICOME 11 (International Conference on Middle English). 5 – 8 February 2019, Florence, Italy. Paper (together with Klaus Hofmann): Some thoughts on some functions of som(e) in Middle English
• Invited speaker to the Department of Linguistics and English Language, University of Manchester: 11 – 13 February 2019, Manchester, UK. Talk a) : A constructional perspective on the development of the English article system'b) master class: 'An introduction to Usage-based Cognitive Construction Grammar
• Invited speaker to the Department of Language and Linguistic Science, University of York. 13 – 15 February 2019, York, UK. Talk: Constructionalization and network reconfiguration: investigating OE NP ecology and the development of the article system
• Invited speaker to the Department of English: University of Neuchatel. 27– 30. September 2018, Neuchatel, Switzerland. Talk: Article Emergence in Old English: Cognitive Factors in Language Change.
• ICCG 10 (10th International Conference on Construction Grammar). 16 – 18 July 2018, Paris, France. Paper: 'Constructional death – investigating the demise of ‘Poss+Dem constructions’ in Old English'
• SLE 50. 10 ‒ 13 September 2017, Zürich, Switzerland. Workshop organization (together with Elena Smirnova): Advances in Diachronic Construction Grammar - debating theoretical tenets and open questions
• ICHL 23 (International Conference on Historical Linguistics). 31 July ‒ 4 August 2017, San Antonio, Texas, USA. Paper: Constructionalization and constructional competition: investigating Old English NP ecology and the development of the indefinite article
• ICLC 14 (International Cognitive Linguistics Conference). 10 ‒ 14 July 2017, Tartu, Estonia. Paper a): Present perfect constructions and their marginalization in learner language: a constructionist approach to foreign language teaching. Paper b) (together with Andreas Baumann):  Layering as a long-term effect of asymmetric priming

   

TEACHING

• Code, Communication and Culture – Western Linguistics during the Last 100 years (Lecture)
• 'I am loving it!' Investigating Mechanisms of Language Change in Present Day English (Undergraduate seminar)
• Kolloquium zu Themen der Literatur- und Sprachwissenschaft des Englischen (Colloquium)
• Modelling Syntax – From Minimalism to Construction Grammar (Lecture)
• Semantics (Undergraduate seminar)
• Usage-Based Cognitive Construction Grammar (Advanced/Master seminar)
• Usage-based Cognitive Construction Grammar (CxG) (Workshop)