The Sydney Speaks Lifespan Corpus

A longitudinal corpus of Australian English, made up of 20 sociolinguistic interviews from a total of five Greek-background and five Italian-background Australians born in the 1960s and recorded in 1977-1981 and 2019. The participants are native speakers of Australian English whose parents migrated from Greece or Italy. Speakers were first recorded as teenage participants in the Sydney Social Dialect Survey (cf. Horvath 1985), and again as middle-aged adults in 2019 as part of Sydney Speaks. Approximately 30 minutes of speech per speaker have been transcribed, for a total of some 86, 000 words. Orthographic transcriptions (including prosodic information) are time aligned at the level of the utterance, and have been force aligned to the level of the segment, making the data ideal for linguistic analysis at a range of levels. The socio-historical information in the recordings provides information about the times the participants have lived through, and their changing relationships to Australian society and their own ethnic identities.
Type
collection
Title
The Sydney Speaks Lifespan Corpus
Alternate Title
SSLC
Collection Type
Dataset
Access Privileges
School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics
DOI - Digital Object Identifier
10.25911/0nnt-5f94
Metadata Language
English
Data Language
English
Significance Statement
The Sydney Speaks Lifespan Corpus is a transcribed collection of spontaneous Australian English speech from five Greek-background and five Italian-background Australians who were first recorded as teenagers between 1977 and 1981 and recorded again in 2019 as middle-aged adults. The dataset comprises approximately 86,000 words of speech. From a linguistic perspective, the SSLC represents an important development in the availability and scope of panel corpora based in Australia and enhances the diversification of research on language change over the lifespan, an area where speakers from ethnic minority backgrounds in diverse communities are underrepresented. It is a rare example of a panel study that represents members of more than one ethnic minority community and is accompanied by trend data from the same minority ethnic communities as well as the ethnic majority (from the wider Sydney Speaks collection). From a socio-historical perspective, the sociolinguistic interviews that make up the collection provide invaluable insights into the connection between broader social changes in Australia and the lives of individual second-generation Greek- and Italian-Australians who experienced these changes.
Brief Description
A longitudinal corpus of spontaneous Australian English speech comprising 20 sociolinguistic interviews with five Greek-background and five Italian-background Australians born in the 1960s. The participants are native speakers of Australian English whose parents migrated from Greece or Italy. Participants were recorded as teenagers in 1977-1981 and again as middle-aged adults in 2019, allowing their speech to be tracked over time. Approximately 30 minutes of each recording has been transcribed orthographically and time aligned at the level of the utterance, and force aligned to the level of the segment
Full Description
A longitudinal corpus of Australian English, made up of 20 sociolinguistic interviews from a total of five Greek-background and five Italian-background Australians born in the 1960s and recorded in 1977-1981 and 2019. The participants are native speakers of Australian English whose parents migrated from Greece or Italy. Speakers were first recorded as teenage participants in the Sydney Social Dialect Survey (cf. Horvath 1985), and again as middle-aged adults in 2019 as part of Sydney Speaks. Approximately 30 minutes of speech per speaker have been transcribed, for a total of some 86, 000 words. Orthographic transcriptions (including prosodic information) are time aligned at the level of the utterance, and have been force aligned to the level of the segment, making the data ideal for linguistic analysis at a range of levels. The socio-historical information in the recordings provides information about the times the participants have lived through, and their changing relationships to Australian society and their own ethnic identities.
Contact Email
elena.sheard@canterbury.ac.nz; catherine.travis@anu.edu.au
Contact Address
School of Literature Languages & Linguistics Research School of Humanities & the Arts 110 Ellery Crescent, Baldessin Precinct The Australian National University ACT 2600 Australia
Contact Phone Number
02 6125 0634(50634)
Principal Investigator
Catherine Travis
Collaborators
James Grama; Simon Gonzalez; Benjamin Purser; Cale Johnstone
Fields of Research
4704 - Linguistics; 470404 - Corpus linguistics; 470410 - Phonetics and speech science; 470411 - Sociolinguistics
Socio-Economic Objective
130202 - Languages and linguistics
Keywords
Linguistics; Language variation and change; Language change over the lifespan; Sociolinguistics; Australian English; Australian history; Ethnicity
Type of Research Activity
Pure basic research
Date Coverage
1977
2019
Geospatial Location
Sydney
Date of data creation
2019
Year of data publication
2024
Creator(s) for Citation
Sheard
Elena
Horvath
Barbara
Travis
Catherine
Publisher for Citation
The Australian National University Data Commons
Publications
https://doi.org/10.25911/0E9J-EQ77
Sheard, E. (2023). Explaining language change over the lifespan: a panel and trend analysis of Australian English [PhD dissertation, Australian National University]. https://doi.org/10.25911/0E9J-EQ77
Explaining language change over the lifespan: a panel and trend analysis of Australian English
Related Websites
Sydney Speaks Project
https://slll.cass.anu.edu.au/sydney-speaks
CoEDL Legacy Web Page
https://legacy.dynamicsoflanguage.edu.au/stories/sydney_speaks.phpsydney-speaks-examining-language-variation-and-change-through-the-stories-people-tell/
Sydney Speaks: Examining language variation and change through the stories people tell
https://sydneycorpuslab.com/sydney-speaks-examining-language-variation-and-change-through-the-stories-people-tell/
Access Rights
Access may be requested through the lead on the compilation of the corpus (Elena Sheard) and the Chief Investigator (Catherine Travis), consistent with the conditions agreed to by the participants.
Access Rights Type
Restricted
Licence Type
AusGoalRestrictive - AusGoal Restrictive Licence
Data Location
This data is located on a NECTAR provided server and held by the Chief Investigator (Catherine Travis)
Retention Period
Indefinitely
Extent or Quantity
20
Data Size
20 GB
Data Management Plan
Yes

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Identifier: anudc:6322

Status: Published
Published to:
  • Australian National University
  • Australian National Data Service
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