[2][3] In 1988 she returned to the University of Naples as associate professor of sociolinguistics.
Between 1990 and 1993 she worked as full professor of sociolinguistics at the University of Calabria, before returning to Naples as full professor of general linguistics, where she was to spend the rest of her career.
[2] Sornicola has held visiting positions at UCLA (1990) and Wolfson College, Cambridge (1983), of which she has been a senior member since 2001.
[2][3][4] Between 1999 and 2003 she served as president of the Italian Society of Linguistics.
[2] Sornicola has published broadly across syntax, functional linguistics, historical linguistics, the languages of Italy, the history of linguistics, second-language acquisition, sociolinguistics, and the language of Roman law.