Phonetic stability across time: Linguistic enclaves in Switzerland

The present paper shows results of a proof-of-concept study on two historically related but geographically separated dialects of Swiss German. Between the 12th and 14th centuries, speakers of Valais German (southwestern Switzerland) emigrated to the southeastern part of the country, forming so-called Sprachinseln (enclaves) of Valais German in a Romansh-speaking area. Using an online survey, we collected responses from 300+ participants from the cantons of Valais and Grisons to examine how the two dialects have developed over time. Results suggest stability on the phonetic level, i. e. the two dialects still sound very similar despite having been geographically separated for 800 years. The morphosyntax and lexicon, however, exhibit substantial change. We discuss historic and sociodemographic factors that may explain these patterns.The present paper shows results of a proof-of-concept study on two historically related but geographically separated dialects of Swiss German. Between the 12th and 14th centuries, speakers of Valais German (southwestern Switzerland) emigrated to the southeastern part of the country, forming so-called Sprachinseln (enclaves) of Valais German in a Romansh-speaking area. Using an online survey, we collected responses from 300+ participants from the cantons of Valais and Grisons to examine how the two dialects have developed over time. Results suggest stability on the phonetic level, i. e. the two dialects still sound very similar despite having been geographically separated for 800 years. The morphosyntax and lexicon, however, exhibit substantial change. We discuss historic and sociodemographic factors that may explain these patterns

Reduction of Survey Sites in Dialectology: A New Methodology Based on Clustering

Many language change studies aim for a partial revisitation, i.e., selecting survey sites from previous dialect studies. The central issue of survey site reduction, however, has often been addressed only qualitatively. Cluster analysis offers an innovative means of identifying the most representative survey sites among a set of original survey sites. In this paper, we present a general methodology for finding representative sites for an intended study, potentially applicable to any collection of data about dialects or linguistic variation. We elaborate the quantitative steps of the proposedmethodology in the context of the “Linguistic Atlas of Japan” (LAJ). Next, we demonstrate the full application of the methodology on the “Linguistic Atlas of German-speaking Switzerland” (Germ.: “Sprachatlas der Deutschen Schweiz”—SDS), with the explicit aim of selecting survey sites corresponding to the aims of the current project “Swiss German Dialects Across Time and Space” (SDATS), which revisits SDS 70 years later. We find that depending on the circumstances and requirements of a study, the proposed methodology, introducing cluster analysis into the survey site reduction process, allows for a greater objectivity in comparison to traditional approaches. We suggest, however, that the suitability of any set of candidate survey sites resulting from the proposed methodology be rigorously revised by experts due to potential incongruences, such as the overlap of objectives and variables across the original and intended studies and ongoing dialect change

‘Chend’ met <e> – ‘Kind’ mit <e>:using Big Data to explore phoneme-to-grapheme mapping in Lucerne Swiss German

Speakers from the canton of Lucerne are infamous for spelling Middle High German (MHG) as when communicating in written Swiss German, e.g. Kind (‘child’) as . This phenomenon has been examined only impressionistically by phoneticians. This study provides a first account of this peculiarity of Lucerne Swiss German spellers: an analysis of normalised formant frequencies of two underlyingly MHG vowels from 200+ speakers of the Dialäkt Äpp corpus revealed that the Lucerne allophone is in reality [e] for most of the localities examined, which may explain why in vernacular writing, spellers prefer over . Homophony due to this peculiarity can cause misunderstandings in written and oral communication, and possibly has repercussions on the reading and writing development of Lucerne students

Big Data for analyses of small-scale regional variation:A case study on sound change in Swiss German

In this case study we examine sound change of Altoberdeutsch in Swiss German dialects. We used contemporary dialect data from nearly 60,000 speakers – collected with the smartphone app Dialäkt Äpp – and compared it to historical Atlas data from the 1950s. Results revealed hierarchical and contra-hierarchical diffusion patterns for some dialectal variants, while other variants remained virtually unchanged over the course of seven decades. We further report change in apparent time, with older speakers using traditional variants more frequently than younger speakers. Using this case study as a model, future work using the Dialäkt Äpp corpus will reveal patterns of feature diffusion and dialect leveling on a larger scale

Sussex by the sea: a descriptive analysis of dialect variation in the South East of England based on English Dialect App data

Dialects in the South East of England are very often perceived as one homogenous mass, without much regional variation. Rosewarne introduced the notion of Estuary English and defined it as ‘variety of modified regional speech [ . . . ] a mixture of non-regional and local south-eastern English pronunciation and intonation’ (Rosewarne, 1984). However, studies such as Przedlacka (2001) and Torgersen & Kerswill (2004) have shown that, at least on the phonetic level, distinct varieties exist. Nevertheless, very few studies have investigated language use in the South East and even fewer in the county of Sussex. It is often claimed that there is no distinct Sussex dialect (Coates, 2010: 29). Even in the earliest works describing the dialect of the area (Wright, 1903) there are suggestions that it cannot be distinguished from Hampshire in the west and Kent in the east

Rhythmic variability in Swiss German dialects

Speech rhythm can be measured acoustically in terms of durational characteristics of consonantal and vocalic intervals. The present paper investigated how acoustically measurable rhythm varies across dialects of Swiss German. Rhythmic measurements (%V, ∆C, ∆V, varcoC, varcoV, rPVI-C, nPVI- C, nPVI-V) were carried out on four sentences of six speakers from eight Swiss dialects. Results indicate that there are significant differences across the dialects in some rhythm measures but not in others and that dialects can be grouped according to rhythmic characteristics