Prof. Dr. Alice Blumenthal-Dramé

University of Freiburg
Linguistics

Internal Senior Fellow
Oktober 2021 – Juli 2022

E-Mail: alice.blumenthal@anglistik.uni-freiburg.de

Last Update: 31.08.2022

Curriculum Vitae

Alice Blumenthal-Dramé is a permanent lecturer for English Linguistics at the English Department of the University of Freiburg. She studied English Philology, Slavic Philology, Computational Linguistics and General Linguistics at the University of Manchester (UK), the Lomonosov University of Moscow (Russian Federation), and the University of Freiburg (Germany), where she received her PhD in 2011 and her Habilitation in 2019.

Her publications exploit behavioural and functional neuroimaging methods to explore the extent to which statistical generalisations across “big data” (notably, large-scale text corpora and databases derived from such corpora) have the potential to offer realistic insights into language users’ cognition. Major motivations behind this research have been: (1) to put to the test the cognitive reality of cognitive linguistic assumptions, and (2) to gain a better understanding of the size and nature of the cognitive building blocks that are utilised in natural language use.

Selected Publications

Ehret, K., Blumenthal-Dramé, A., Bentz, C., & Berdicevskis, A. (2021). Meaning and Measures: Interpreting and Evaluating Complexity Metrics. Frontiers in Communication, 6, 640510. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2021.640510
McConnell, K., & Blumenthal-Dramé, A. (2019). Effects of task and corpus-derived association scores on the online processing of collocations. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1515/cllt-2018-0030
Blumenthal-Dramé, A., Glauche, V., Bormann, T., Weiller, C., Musso, M., & Kortmann, B. (2017b). Frequency and chunking in derived words: A parametric fMRI study. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 29(7), 1162–1177. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_01120
Hanulíková, A., Ferstl, E. C., & Blumenthal-Dramé, A. (2020). Language comprehension across the life span: Introduction to the special section. International Journal of Behavioral Development. https://doi.org/10.1177/0165025420954531
Blumenthal-Dramé, A. (2021). The Online Processing of Causal and Concessive Relations: Comparing Native Speakers of English and German. Discourse Processes, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/0163853X.2020.1855693

FRIAS Project

Diversity in Language and Cognition

Language use is greatly influenced by a variety of individual characteristics of the communication partners, such as age, gender, or the linguistic and/or cultural background. A better understanding of the impact of such diversity dimensions on language processing is crucial, since institutions strive for creating an inclusive environment, but struggle with the challenges posed by the resulting diversity. This research focus aims to explore how the experimental language sciences can be enriched by including individual person characteristics. Neuro- and psycholinguistic research on the respective diversity dimensions has been conducted in rather separate research communities. In contrast, scholars in gender studies have stressed the importance of integrating the dimensions and considering them in concert. Intersectionality, as this approach is termed, has been applied in qualitative studies on inequality and discrimination in society, but its potential for quantitative studies on language has not yet been discussed. By bringing together researchers from linguistics, cognitive science and gender studies we aim to promote the interdisciplinary exchange about diversity in language.