Review: The speech corpus and database of Japanese dialects
Yasuko Nagano-Madsen · Lund University Publications (Lund University) · 1996
The Speech Corpus and Database of Japanese Dialects (henceforth SCDJD) is a recording of readings of words, phrases, sentences, and texts in Japanese dialects. The focus of the speech material is on prosody, in particular, on accentual variations, and to a lesser extent on intonation. In addition to the dialectal materials, SCDJD contains speech of the minority language Ainu, Japanese traditional singings, school children's speech, and speech by the foreign learners of Japanese. It consists of nineteen CDs, which are referred to as speech corpus and three CD-ROMs which are referred to as a database. SCDJD is the outcome of a national research project Integrated Studies on Prosodic Features of Current Japanese Language with Application to Spoken Language Education (project leader Miyoko Sugito), which was funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture in Japan for the period of 1989-93. The project stands out both in its scope and scale, involving nearly three hundred specialists. The project was divided into four major groups, engaged in (1) collection of speech data and dialectal analysis, (2) creation of a speech database, (3) acoustic, physiological, and linguistic analysis, and (4) pedagogical application (for details, see Sugito 1994). The thought behind the project is an increasing awareness of the importance of studying dialects. The regions in which Standard Japanese is spoken are rather limited. Instead, it is the dialect which is closely linked with everyday life of the region. Yet many of the dialects are currently undergoing a rapid change due to the influence of mass media. A detailed analysis of each dialect is urgently needed, as well as the preservation of dialects in a permanent form.