ABSTRACT This is a pilot project to develop and refine a suitable survey methodology for investigating some key features of language change in progress. Studies of sound change over the past two centuries have led to the formulation of a number of general principles governing the spread of sound change. Though some specific quantitative models incorporating these principles have been developed on the basis of specific community studies, efforts to confirm the models on a larger scale have been limited. The aim of this pilot project is to lay the groundwork for collecting a continental sample of North American English, with the aim of a quantitative, empirical test of four general principles of sound change. The pilot project will focus on an area of the upper U. S. Midwest, including Northern Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Speech samples from this area will be obtained via telephone interviews, and the results analyzed by both instrumental and traditional techniques of phonetic analysis. The pilot project will test and improve the research methodology, providing the basis for developing the broader-scale project to be carried out in the future.
