Marlyse Baptista is pursuing a long-term project involving both linguists and geneticists. The project focuses on reconstructing the founding populations and their source languages in the Cape Verde islands.

Her team includes Noah Rosenberg (Stanford University), Paul Verdu (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris) Ethan Jewett (UC Berkeley), Sérgio Costa (University of Cape Verde), Trevor Pemberton (University of Manitoba) and Valentin Thouzeau (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris). Last July, they collected speech data and DNA samples (saliva) from a total of 56 individuals and compiled a Swadesh list on the islands of Santo Antão, São Vicente and Santiago.

This spring, they will collect more data on the islands of Brava, Fogo and Santiago.