Maria Luisa Zubizarreta

Maria Luisa Zubizarreta is a professor emerita of linguistics at the University of Southern California (USC). Born in Asunción, Paraguay, she earned her Maîtrise in General Linguistics from Paris 8 University in 1978 and her PhD in Linguistics from MIT in 1982, with a dissertation on the relationship between the lexicon and syntax. She held various academic positions before joining USC in 1988 until her retirement. She is married to Jean-Roger Vergnaud, a fellow linguist at USC.

Zubizarreta's research focuses on generative linguistics, particularly linguistic theory as a model of mental competence and performance. Her work explores interfaces such as lexicon-syntax and prosody-syntax of focus. She conducted empirical studies on second language acquisition, examining how learners develop interlanguage. Additionally, she investigated person-related phenomena in languages like Paraguayan Guaraní.

In 2019, Zubizarreta was honored with a workshop titled "Person and Perspective" and a Festschrift published by Cambridge University Press, titled "Exploring Interfaces."

Her notable publications include works on syntactic composition, prosody and focus, representation in the lexicon and syntax, encoding discourse-based meaning, and the syntax of possession and person-based alignment in Paraguayan Guaraní.