VinKo (Varieties in Contact) Corpus

Description

VINKO is a spoken corpus based on crowd-sourced audio recordings that has been designed to provide relevant linguistic information about the minority languages and dialects spoken in the area between Innsbruck and the Po Valley. The corpus contains audio recordings from local languages and varieties spoken in the regions Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol, Veneto and Friuli-Venezia Giulia, with particular focus on the so-called ‘language contact’ between Germanic (Cimbrian, Mòcheno, Tyrolean, Saurano) and Romance (Ladin, Trentino and Veneto dialects). The data collection took place from June 2017 to May 2021.

Part of the recordings can be visualized on the open-access section “Listen and Explore” of the project web page, which can be used by participants and anyone interested in exploring the collected data.

URL: https://www.vinko.it/index.php Contact: vinko@ateneo.univr.it

Authors

Readme structure

  1. General
  2. Abbreviations
  3. Data Structure
  4. Additional Information
  5. Error Reporting

1. General

2. Abbreviations

Languages

Phonological phenomena

3. Data Structure

File structure under each language variety is identical and organized as follows:

VINKO
│   README.md
│ 
└─── Audio folders
│      └───cim
│       │   | S0027_cim_U0056.flac
│       │   | S0034_cim_U0056.flac
│       │   | T0101_cim_U0056.flac
│       │   | T0101_cim_U0140.flac
│       │   | W0099_cim_U0056.flac
│       │   | W0102_cim_U0140.flac
│       |   | ...
│       |
│       └───lldan (equivalent to "cim")
│       └───lldba (equivalent to "cim")
│       └───lldfa (equivalent to "cim")
│       └───lldfo (equivalent to "cim")
│       └───lldgh (equivalent to "cim")
│       └───mhn (equivalent to "cim")
│       └───zah (equivalent to "cim")
│       └───tre (equivalent to "cim")
│       └───tir (equivalent to "cim")
│       └───vec (equivalent to "cim")
│
└─── Metadata
│     └─── Users.ods
│     └─── Sentences.ods 
│     └─── Tales.ods
│     └─── Words.ods
│
└─── Images 
    │ 001_image.png
    | 002_image_IT.png
    │ 002_image_DE.png
    | ...

As can be seen, the VinKo Corpus consists of three main folders: the audio folder, containing raw audio recordings collected from speakers; the metadata folder, containing tables with relevant linguistic information as well as sociolinguistic information about speakers; the images folder, containing the pictures employed as visual context for the morphology section. In addition, there is this readme file with the main information about the corpus and the VinKo project.

The audio files collected in this repository come from two versions of the VinKo web platform which have been implemented over the years: version 1 covers the two-year-span 2017/2018, whereas version 2 covers from 2019 to 2021.

Audio folders

There are audio recordings in six out of the seven language varieties (to date there are no recordings of Saurano yet) for three different levels of linguistic analysis: phonology, morphology, and syntax. The investigation of each linguistic domain involves a different type of linguistic stimulus: single words for phonology; short stories with a visual context for morphology; sentences for syntax. All linguistic domains are available in the different language varieties and they are comparable across these language varieties.

The audio file name always mentions the stimulus ID, the language variety and the user ID (e.g., S0027_cim_U0056). The first letter of the stimulus ID indicates the linguistic domain under investigation:

*“S” = Syntax (sentences) *“T” = Morphology (tales) *“W” = Phonology (words)

Some speakers recorded more than one audio file for the same stimulus. These files are reported in the corpus as follows: S001_cim_U0056a, S001_cim_U0056b.

This section investigates three main phonological phenomena across language varieties:

These phenomena have been investigated within specific contexts. This information is reported in the corresponding table in the metadata folder (Words.ods).

This section investigates the following morphological phenomena:

The specific linguistic variables investigated are reported in the corresponding table in the metadata folder (Tales.ods).

This section investigates the following syntactic topics:

Each of these broad topics includes the analysis of different linguistic variables which are reported in the corresponding table in the metadata folder (Sentences.ods).

Metadata folder

This folder contains four tables with the relevant information about the speakers and the linguistic stimuli:

The speaker information includes:

The metadata for the phonology section includes the following information:

The metadata for the syntax section includes the following information:

The metadata for the morphology section includes the following information:

4. Additional information

Websites

https://www.vinko.it/listen-explore.php

Scientific Publications

Dissemination

5. Error reporting

The collected files are raw audio data and some may be missing or empty. If you spot any inconsistency, error, or corrupted recording please contact us at vinko@ateneo.univr.it.