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 Sappadino) and Romance (Ladin, Trentino and Veneto dialects). The data collection took place from June 2017 to December 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
PROJECT OF EXCELLENCE DiLLS: Digital Humanities applied to Foreign Languages and Literatures 2018-2022, University of Verona Project code: CUP n. B31I18000250006 Funding organization: Ministero dell’Università e della Ricerca;
Project PRIN 2015 “TREiL” (Technologies for Research and Education in Linguistics) 2017-2020, University of Trento (CIMeC/DIPSCO) Project code: Prot. 2015MNX5ZE - CUP n. E72F16001620001 Funding organization: Ministero dell’Università e della Ricerca;
Project AThEME (Advancing the European Multilingual Experience) Project grant: n. 613465 Funding organization: European Seventh Framework Programme for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration (EU)
File structure under each language variety is identical and organized as follows:
VINKO
|--- README.txt
¦
+--- cim_lldfa_lldfo_lldan_lldgh_lldba_mhn_zah
¦ +--- cim
¦ |--- S0027_cim_U0056.flac
¦ |--- W0098_cim_U0056.flac
¦ |--- T0101_cim_U0056.flac
¦ |...
¦ +--- lldfa
¦ |--- ... equivalent to "cim"
¦ +--- lldfo
¦ |--- ... equivalent to "cim"
¦ +--- lldan
¦ |--- ... equivalent to "cim"
¦ +--- lldgh
¦ |--- ... equivalent to "cim"
¦ +--- lldba
¦ |--- ... equivalent to "cim"
¦ +--- mhn
¦ |--- ... equivalent to "cim"
¦ +--- zah
¦ |--- ... equivalent to "cim"
¦
+--- tir_01 (from ID U0048 to ID 0429)
¦ |--- T0312_tir_U0392.flac
¦ |--- W0460_tir_U0360.flac
¦ |--- S0104_tir_U0391.flac
¦ |...
+--- tir_02 (equivalent to "tir_01", from ID U0430 to ID 0489)
+--- tir_03 (equivalent to "tir_01", from ID U0490 to ID 0819)
+--- tre
¦ |--- W0001_tre_U0077.flac
¦ |--- S0115_tre_U0169.flac
¦ |--- T0316_tre_U0607.flac
¦ |...
+--- vec_01 (from ID U0298 to ID 0529)
¦ |--- S0088_vec_U0307.flac
¦ |--- W0480_vec_U0515.flac
¦ |--- T0403_vec_U0449.flac
¦ |...
+--- vec_02 (equivalent to "vec_01", from ID U0539 to ID 0691)
+--- vec_03 (equivalent to "vec_01", from ID U0692 to ID 0769)
+--- vec_04 (equivalent to "vec_01", from ID U0770 to ID 0817)
+--- vec_05 (equivalent to "vec_01", from ID U0820 to ID 0873)
+--- vec_06 (equivalent to "vec_01", from ID U0874 to ID 0900)
¦
+--- 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:
1 readme file: contains the main information about the corpus and the Vinko project
1 Metadata folder: contains tables with relevant linguistic information as well as sociolinguistic information about speakers;
1 Images folder: contains the pictures employed as visual context for the morphology section;
11 Audio folders containing raw audio recordings collected from speakers. The audio files were organized based on language variety. For ease of dowloading, multiple folders (max size 2GB) were created for Veneto and Tyrolean. In these subfolders, the audio files were split along USER IDs (see Users table)
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.
There are audio recordings in seven out of the eight language varieties (to date there are no recordings of Sappadino 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:
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).
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:
Vita Trentina (06/2017) https://www.vitatrentina.it/2017/06/29/parli-dialetto-fatti-sentire/
La Usc di Ladins (04/2021) https://www.lausc.it/valedes-ladines/fascia/15356-vinko-n-projet-per-valoriser-i-lengac-mendres
Di Sait vo Lusérn (04/2021) http://mediateca.istitutocimbro.it/applications/webwork/site_bibliocim/media/sait_vo_lusern/2021_04_02.pdf
Zimbar Earde (27/03/2021 - min 7:00) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8rBYsAlpa0
RAI Radio1 Interview - Alla sorgente del sapere (10/2021) http://www.urly.it/3gva6
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.
Addition of Sappadino to the language varieties under investigation
Metadata folder > Words: phonology section now includes new items for Sappadino. For each word, the glosses are provided both in Standard German and Standard Italian.
Metadata folder > Sentences: fixed a typo for item S0031 (him > ihm)
Upload of the audio data collected from June to December 2021. Number of total audio files from 37806 to 63863.
Audio data split into multiple folders for Veneto and Tyrolean due to large amount of data (see #3 Data Structure for explanation about the split)
Metadata folder > Users: new participants included
Metadata folder > Users: column ‘note’ included - here you can find comments on participants and questionnaire administration, e.g., if the participant selected the wrong language variety
User U0648 has been removed from Metadata folder > Users as it contains old linguistic data without precise information about the speaker. The corresponding audio files can still be accessed in Audio folder > lldgh (Gardenese)
RAI Radio1 Interview added to 4. Additional information > Dissemination