Lotte Sommerer

Lotte Sommerer is Professor and Chair of English Linguistics at the Department of English and American Studies, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), a position she has held since October 1, 2024. She previously served as Assistant Professor at the University of Freiburg from March 2021 to September 2024.

As a historical, functional-cognitive linguist, Professor Sommerer specializes in morphosyntactic variation and change across Modern English, Middle English, and Old English. She subscribes to a usage-based, constructional theory of morphosyntax (CCxG) that emphasizes functional and cognitive constraints while accounting for linguistic variation.

Her research encompasses several interconnected domains:

• Cognitive Construction Grammar frameworks
• Diachronic language evolution processes
• Grammaticalization and Constructionalization phenomena
• Lexicon-Grammar interface interactions
• Noun phrase structural development
• Linguistic categorization mechanisms across historical English stages

Professor Sommerer serves as Editor-in-Chief of the open access journal Constructions alongside Stefan Hartmann from the University of Düsseldorf. Her scholarly work bridges theoretical linguistics with historical language analysis, maintaining an active research profile as evidenced by her recent habilitation at the University of Freiburg in 2022.