André Batchelder-Schwab

Keywords

• Linguistics

Biography

I was raised in Switzerland and completed university studies in the United States. I returned to Europe following my PhD.

Research

My primary focus is on fieldwork and language documentation. One main project is the documentation of the Tshila language in Botwana, where I am writing a dictionary, grammar, and series of traditional stories. The focus of my dissertation and postdoc has been the documentation of a number of whistled registers across Africa, where people can communicate words and sentences through whistling. The exact mechanics of this are language-specific but largely lean on tone and in maintaining distinctions of a number of classes of consonant and vowel qualities. I have looked at whistled registers of Akan-Twi, Greek, Kinande, TshiVenda and isiXhosa in detail, and have pilot data for many others including Kimbuti (Pygmy), Kilendu/Ngiti, Alur, and Shekgalagadi. Another major part of my journey so far has been in working with the Pinoleville Pomo Nation in Northern California to revitalize the dormant Northern Pomo language by creating language materials for high school classes and for summer camps. Finally, partly through this experience with Northern Pomo, I am actively interested in pivoting back to my own community's critically endangered language, Fribourg Patois (Francoprovençal). This was the home language of my grandparents, and I have been learning from the last fluent speakers in my community. I am currently working on documenting the intonational system of our language.