Abstract
The present study deals with the areal variation of /r/-realisations in the Alemannic dialects spoken in Switzerland. In particular, we provide a quantitative survey of recordings collected through crowdsourcing, i. e. by means of the smartphone application Dialäkt Äpp (Leemann/Kolly 2013). Each of the 2851 recordings of the word trinke (‘to drink’) was auditorily coded by at least two of the four authors. The resulting maps show a neat areal distribution of the realisations of /r/, with alveolar variants in most of the central Midlands and in the Alpine regions. Uvular variants, on the other hand, seem to prevail in the northeastern and northwestern parts of German-speaking Switzerland. Comparing our data with traditional dialectological sources, we find evidence for the hypothesis that the alveolar realisation of /r/ has been extensively replaced by uvular variants in large parts of the northeast; apparently, a similar sound change is now in progress in the rural areas around Basel.
Schmid, Stephan