Louis Gauchat

Louis Gauchat (born 12 January 1866 in Les Brenets, Switzerland; died 22 August 1942 in Lenzerheide) was a Swiss linguist.

He studied at the University of Zürich under Heinrich Morf and in Paris as a pupil of Gaston Paris, receiving his doctorate in 1890 with the dissertation Le patois de Dompierre. He later worked as a lecturer at Bern (1893–96) and Zürich (1897–1902), and in 1902 was named a professor of Romance philology at the University of Bern. In 1907 he succeeded Jakob Ulrich at the University of Zürich, where he taught classes until 1931. In 1909, with Albert Bachmann, he founded the phonogram archives at the university. In 1926–28 he served as academic rector.

Gauchat studied the French language spoken in Switzerland. In 1899 he founded Glossaire des patois de la Suisse romande (Glossary of dialects of French-speaking Switzerland), an institution to publish comprehensive studies of Switzerland's French dialects. The institute receives subsidies from French-speaking cantons and the Swiss Confederation. Jules Jeanjaquet and Ernest Tappolet assisted in phonetic survey work. The first issue of the glossary was published in 1924.

His 1905 article on the vernacular of the Swiss village of Charmey is considered a precursor in the field of sociolinguistics.

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