Creating a corpus

[Adam Schembri]

Trevor Johnston and I are collecting a corpus of Australian Sign Language
(Auslan). We intend to collect 3 hours worth of data from 100 native signers
from around the country that will assist in the description of the grammar
of the language. We am particularly interested in ensuring that the data we
collect will be comparable to data available for other signed and spoken
languages so as to maximise the possibility of cross-linguistic comparison.
We would be very pleased to chat with any other researchers that are also
planning or have undertaken corpus studies.

We are in the process of reviewing the materials we could use to create a
corpus. We hope to collect 30 minutes of conversational data, as well as
undertake a 20-30 minute interview, but we would also like to elicit some
narrative and other data.

NARRATIVE TASKS

In terms of eliciting narratives, the following seem to be used in the
literature:

*'The Pear Story' (William Chafe's film)
*'Mr Koumal' (Judy Kegl et al.)
*'Canary Row' episode of Tweety & Sylvester (McNeill, Brentari etc)
*'The Tortoise and the Hare'(Supalla et al.)
*'The Snowman' (Brennan, Coerts)
* Aesop's fables, including 'The Boy Who Cried Wolf' etc (ECHO project)
*'Frog Where Are You?' (Morgan, Engberg-Pedersen, Brentari etc)

Are there other narratives that colleagues on SLLING-L would recommend?

GRAMMATICAL ELICITATION TASKS

Here are some that we have access to:

*'The test battery for American Sign Language morphology and syntax'
(Supalla et al.) filmed vignettes for directional verbs, classifier signs,
noun-verb pairs, modifications for number and aspect, and sign order
*Zwitserlood materials for classifier signs
*Schick materials for classifier signs
*Volterra materials for sign order
*Russell Tomlin's 'Fish Film' for word order

Are there other materials that colleagues are aware of and/or would be happy
to share?

BARRIER TASKS

Any suggestions or recommendations for good barrier tasks that would involve
the elicitation of polar and content questions, as well as negation?

OTHER TASKS
Any ideas?

All comments would be most welcome. I would be happy to post a summary to
the list.

Cheers,
Adam


--
Adam Schembri, PhD
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Renwick College
University of Newcastle/RIDBC
Private Bag 29
Parramatta NSW
2124 Australia
Ph: +61 2 9872 0281
Fax: +61 2 9873 1614
Mob: +61 439 376 466
http://homepage.mac.com/adam.and.joe/Work/AdamSchembri.htm