Gschmöis – Crowdsourcing grammatical data of Swiss German

Abstract

In recent years, a number of applications on Swiss German have been released. They all crowdsource dialectological data, yet until recently their main focus has been on lexical and phonological features. In 2018, we launched the app gschmöis , an app designed to (1) give users an insight into dialectological research, and (2) collect Swiss German data on all linguistic levels, but with a strong emphasis on morphosyntactic phenomena. At the beginning, three rounds were published. Since then new rounds were published periodically. By including not only lexical and phonological features, we want speakers of Swiss German to become aware of differences in the grammar of various Swiss German dialects.The same linguistic phenomena are covered by multiple questions, and some of the questions are duplicated from more traditional projects, like atlas projects on Swiss German. This allows for comparison across different question types (i.e. translation tasks vs. multiple choice questions), different collection methods (fieldwork methods used in the SDS, written questionnaires used in the SADS, and crowdsourcing via the smartphone application gschmöis ), and different groups of informants (NORMs vs. speakers of Swiss German of various gender and age groups). Furthermore, the older data of previous projects can directly be compared with the crowdsourced data, so that recent dialect change can be detected.