Martin Mössmer

Linguist, PhD student, cook

My name is Martin Mössmer, and I am a PhD student at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. I have an MA and BA(Hons) in linguistics from the University of Cape Town.

Originally from Pretoria, South Africa, I moved to Cape Town in 2007 to study the culinary arts. For the next few years I worked as a chef, before opening a bakery in Muizenberg. After four years of kneading dough and many 3 am's, I decided to go to university. There, in 2014, linguistics stormed in and took over my life and many of my interests!

I have been studying, learning, researching, and working in linguistics ever since.

My broad research interests include phonetics and phonology, contact languages, language maintenance and loss,   and morphosyntax. More narrowly, I am interested in the mutual influences between locally dominant languages (Afrikaans, Bantu languages) and the "Khoisan" languages, patterns in language attrition, and varieties of ‘non-standard’ Afrikaans. I am also interested in more anthropological aspects—folklore and stories—of the communities I have worked with.