Lisa Gotthard
Lecturer
- Linguistics and English Language
- School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences
Contact details
- Email: l.gotthard@ed.ac.uk
- Web: https://www.lisagotthard.com/
Address
- Street
-
Room 3.05, Dugald Stewart Building
- City
- 3 Charles Street, Edinburgh
- Post code
- EH8 9AD
Background
I am Lecturer in English Language, with a research focus on English and Scots in the Early Modern period. I have parsed a corpus of Scots correspondence from 1540-1750 (the 'Parsed Corpus of Scottish Correspondence', to be made available), and have a keen interest in methods involving building and using parsed corpora. My other research interests involve syntactic variation and change, historical sociolinguistics, and language contact.
CV
139038.pdf
Qualifications
2013-16: BA with Honours in Linguistics, University of York
2016-17: MSc (Dist.) in English Language, University of Edinburgh
- Dissertation title: The diachrony of do-support in Scots
2018-22: PhD in Linguistics and English Language, University of Edinburgh
- Title: Syntactic change during the anglicisation of Scots: Insights from the Parsed Corpus of Scottish Correspondence
- Supervisory team: Bettelou Los, Rob Truswell, Rhona Alcorn (ext.), Beatrice Santorini (ext.)
Undergraduate teaching
2025/26
- LEL1A – History and Variation
- Scots & Scottish English – history; features: morphosyntax; language status and planning
- Historical Linguistics - semantic change; morphological change; grammaticalisation; contact and convergence
- History of Scots (CO)
Open to PhD supervision enquiries?
Yes
Research summary
Historical Variation and Change in English and Scots, Syntax, parsed corpora, corpus methods, language contact, cross-germanic comparison
Affiliated research centres
Project activity
Since Jan 2026, I am Co-Investigator on the UKRI/NSF-funded project INTSAYT (INvestigating and Treebanking Scots And Yiddish Together), with PI Joel Wallenberg (University of Newcastle) and Co-Is Seth Kulick and Neville Ryant (LDC, UPenn).
During 2022-2025, I worked with Prof. George Walkden (PI; Uni Konstanz) and Dr. Sirri Björnsdóttir on the project 'Modelling lexical diffusion in syntax: non-finite complementation in Modern English' -- project H4 under the DFG-funded research unit 'Structuring the Input in Language Processing, Acquisition and Change' (SILPAC). I spent 4 weeks at Uni Konstanz working on this project, Oct-Nov 2022.