Abstract
In this case study we examine change in the FACE vowel across England. We used contemporary dialect data from more than 40,000 speakers – collected with the English Dialects smartphone app – and compared them to historical Atlas data from the 1950s. Results revealed substantial leveling tendencies towards Standard Southern British English [ei] – Geordie [iə] and [iɐ], however, appear to resist this change. We further discuss methodological limitations, such as the reliability of collecting response data through smartphone applications. Using this case study as a model, future work using the English Dialects App Corpus aims to reveal further patterns of feature diffusion and dialect leveling in English dialects.
Leemann, Adrian