Patience L. Epps

Patience L. Epps is the Dallas TACA Centennial Professor in the Humanities at the University of Texas at Austin, where she teaches in the Department of Linguistics within the College of Liberal Arts. She earned her Ph.D. in Linguistic Anthropology from the University of Virginia in 2005.

Her research focuses on descriptive and documentary work on indigenous Amazonian languages, linguistic typology, language contact and change, and Amazonian indigenous histories. She has published extensively in journals like Diachronica, International Journal of American Linguistics, Linguistic Typology, and Studies in Language, and authored the monograph A Grammar of Hup (Mouton Grammar Library 43). She co-edited the volume Historical Linguistics and Endangered Languages: Exploring Diversity in Language Change (Routledge, 2022).

Professor Epps teaches courses such as Language Contact (LIN 393), Research in Documentary/Descriptive Linguistics (LIN 389D), Language Change and Variation (LIN 345), and Language and Culture in Amazonia (UGS 302), with recent offerings extending to Fall 2025. Her work emphasizes the significance of endangered languages in reshaping theories of language change and typology, particularly through cross-linguistic analysis of phonological, morphological, and syntactic phenomena.