Voices of Switzerland
What does the linguistic landscape of (German-speaking) Switzerland look like today?
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What does the linguistic landscape of (German-speaking) Switzerland look like today? The Internet application can be accessed in all four national languages of Switzerland and, for each language, contains specific questions addressing various linguistic aspects (especially phonetics, phonology, morphology and syntax). The survey comprises about 20 short recordings (single words or sentences) for each language module. For the German-language module, speakers are asked to name items displayed on a picture. Provided the speakers give permission for release, the recordings are reviewed and inserted in a map using Google Maps. All the places marked on this map can be clicked, and the recordings of that location can be displayed and listened to. Two Master's theses have resulted from the German-speaking part of the audio corpus, one on the subject of suprasegmentals (Stadler 2015) and one on inflectional morphology (Widmer, in prep.). Stadler, for example, was able to provide empirical evidence that in the case of Romance loan words in Swiss German, it depends on the speaker whether the stress lies on the first or the second syllabel, and that preferences for syllable stress are distributed geographically. The Swiss German word Kabine, for example, provides a picture that well reflects general tendencies: in central Switzerland, Kabine is stressed on the first syllable, while in Valais stress lies on the second syllable. In the easternmost cantons no clear tendency can be observed. A comparison with other, similar words reveals that the words examined in the west of Switzerland show almost exclusively initial syllable stress, whereas in the east they are mostly stressed on the second syllable. The transitional area is relatively large, with Valais joining the east. (www.stimmen.uzh.ch, www.voix.uzh.ch, www.voci.uzh.ch, www.vuschs.uzh.ch)
Project members: Voices of Switzerland 2012 / 2013:
Voices of Switzerland 2018:
Graphic artists: Lisa Senn und Michael Koller |