Eliciting comparable spoken data in minor languages: first observations from the corpus Kontatti
Eliciting comparable spoken data in minor languages: first observations from the corpus Kontatti

Summary/Abstract: In this contribution, we will deal with the issue of building a spoken corpus of conversational data that can be easily compared across languages. We will present linguistic codes embedded in Trentino and South Tyrol, where multilingualism (de jure) is the rule. In this area of northern Italy, more than two languages and cultures coexist and are in contact with one another. The corpus includes the major languages Italian and German and minor languages and dialects belonging both to the Romance language group, such as Ladin and Trentino dialect varieties, and from the Germanic language group, such as Cimbrian and South Tyrolean dialects. We will discuss the methodology used to elicit spontaneous spoken data in minor languages and dialects, focusing on the Map Task (Anderson et al. 1991), which has been shown to be an efficient technique for eliciting semi–spontaneous dialogues and providing a representative sample of pragmatic, textual and syntactic contexts that are at least partially expected, and thus comparable (Cerrato 2007: 9). This technique allows the speakers to focus on extra–linguistic context and on a problem–solving task, reducing both the observer’s paradox and the speakers’ monitoring of their linguistic production.

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