Patricia Schneider-Zioga, Ph.D.
Professor of Linguistics / Linguistics Program Coordinator
Biography
I received my Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Southern California. My dissertation examined the syntax of clitic-doubling in Modern Greek. I continue to be fascinated by the syntax of agreeing constructions such as pronominal clitics and subject/verb agreement.
My Erdös number is 5. This number measures how distant I am in co-authorship from the prolific and collaborative mathematician Paul Erdös. The fact that linguists can have an Erdös number demonstrates that at least some linguists have cooperated with mathematicians in order to solve problems in the field of linguistics (or vice versa).
Degrees
Ph.D., University of Southern California, Los Angeles
M.A., University of Southern California, Los Angeles
Research Areas
Generative syntax, in particular agreement and anti-agreement; copulas and other linking morphemes; Information structure, pronominal clitics and related syntactic phenomena such as clitic doubling and clitic left dislocation; nominal licensing; causatives. dyslexia. heritage languages.
- languages of interest: Kinande and other Bantu languages; Niger-Congo languages; Modern Greek; Austronesian languages; Ojibwe; Heritage language Spanish
Courses Regularly Taught
Linguistic field methods, generative syntax, psycholinguistics, language acquisition, languages of the world, bibliography & research methods, language & gender.
Publications
Schneider-Zioga, Patricia. To appear. Move and Agree: the view from specificational copular clauses in Kinande. In James Crippen, Rose-Marie Déchaine and Hermann Keupdjio (eds.), Move and Agree: towards a formal typology. John Benjamins.
Nancy Hedberg, Teresita Garduno, Emrah Görgülü, Monica-Alexandrina Irimia, Patricia Schneider-Zioga, Juan Manuel Sosa, Keith Tse, & Yifang Yuan. To appear. On the differential use of subtypes of English clefts in dialogue. Proceedings of the 2023 annual conference of the Canadian Linguistic Association.
Schneider-Zioga, Patricia & Monica Alexandrina Irimia. 2024. Partitives, Case and licensing in Kinande. In Elena Anagnostopoulou, Dionysios Mertyris & Christina Sevdali (eds.), On the place of case in grammar . Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Irimia, Monica-Alexandrina & Patricia Schneider-Zioga. 2022. Partitive sharing--how to help in Kinande. Partitives cross-linguistically: dimensions of variation. special issue of Linguistic Variation https://benjamins.com/catalog/lv
Irimia, Monica-Alexandrina & Patricia Schneider-Zioga. 2021. DOM in Kinande. In Lee Bickmore, Michael Cahill, Michael Diercks, Laura J Downing, James Essegbey, Katie Franich, Laura McPherson, Sharon Rose (eds.), Celebrating 50
years of ACAL: Selected Papers from the 50th Annual Conference on
African Linguistics.
Schneider-Zioga, Patricia. (in press). Non-verbal predication in Bantu. In Jochen Zeller, Lutz Marten, Nancy Kula, & Ellen Hurst (eds.), The Oxford guide to the Bantu languages. Oxford University Press.
Schneider-Zioga, Patricia. 2019. On the licensing of nominals in Kinande. In Akumbu, P. & E. P. Chie (eds.), Engagement with Africa: Linguistic Essays in Honor of Ngessimo Mutaka. Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.
Schneider-Zioga, Patricia. 2019. On the syntax of pronominal clitics: A view from Greek. In Mónica Cabrera & José Camacho (eds.), Exploring Interfaces . Cambridge University Press.
Schneider-Zioga, Patricia & Mutaka, Philip N. 2019. The syntax
and semantics of helping: Sociative causation in Kinande.
The Journal of African Languages & Linguistics. vol 40(2). 271-310.
Schneider-Zioga, Patricia & Mutaka, Philip N. 2015.
Small clauses &
secondary predication in Kinande.
The Journal of West African Languages, vol 42(2).
Schneider-Zioga, Patricia & Mutaka, Philip N. 2015. Copular clauses in Kinande. The Journal of West African Languages, vol 42(2).
Schneider-Zioga, Patricia & Mutaka, Philip N. 2015. The linker in Kinande: a predication relation. The Journal of West African Languages, vol 42(2).
Schneider-Zioga, Patricia. 2014. The linker in Kinande re-examined
. In One Boyer, Ruth Kramer, & Elizabeth Zsiga (eds.), Selected proceedings of
the 44th Annual Conference of African Linguistics (pp. 264-276). Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
Schneider-Zioga, Patricia. 2014. Additive Focus in Kinande
. In One Boyer, Ruth Kramer, & Elizabeth Zsiga (eds.), Selected proceedings of the 44th Annual Conference of African Linguistics. Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
Schneider-Zioga, Patricia & Mutaka, Philip Ngessimo. 2014. Technical Report #12: Linkers & Relators in Kinande . In The Afranaph Project: An online resource for research on African languages. Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. http://www.africananaphora.rutgers.edu/technical-reports-mainmenu-199
Schneider-Zioga, Patricia. 2014.
Linking, Predication, & Symmetry: On the Syntax of the Linker in Kinande
. In Thomas Borer, Huilin Fang, Alfredo Garcia-Pardo, Peter Guekguezian, Brian Hsu, Charlie O'Hara, Iris Ouyang & Ulrike Steindl (eds.), Proceedings of the 32ndAnnual West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (pp. 323-331). Cascadilla Press.
Schneider-Zioga, Patricia. 2012. Phonological precedence in dyslexia: A case study. Language Acquisition, 19(3), 183-222.
Schneider-Zioga, Patricia. 2009. Wh-agreement and bounded unbounded movement. In Jose Brucart, Anna Gavarro, & Jaume Sola (eds.), Merging features (pp. 46-59). Oxford University Press: Oxford.
Schneider-Zioga, Patricia. 2007. Anti-agreement, anti-locality and minimality: The syntax of dislocated subjects. Natural Langua
and Linguistic Theory 25(2), 403-446.
Scholarly Work
Additional work on copulas in Kinande
-
Agreement asymmetries in non-verbal predication in Kinande
talk & slides from Bantu 8, 2020/2021 - collaborative work with Nancy Hedberg. 2015.
Predication, Specification, & Information Structure in Kinande
. poster GLOW 38
Office Hours
Fall 2025
To be announced
Websites
- member of Corpus Pragmatics & Prosody Lab ; Simon Fraser University. Vancouver, Canada
- Lab established and directed by Nancy Hedberg, Simon Fraser University.
- Lab founder and director
- Open to graduate, undergraduate, and independent scholars
- current research project: socio-grammar--linguistic politeness in heritage language Spanish
