<&>Wellington Corpus of Spoken New Zealand English Version One <&>Copyright 1998 School of Linguistics & Applied Language Studies <&>Victoria University of Wellington <&>side one <&>30:31 how many of these interviews are you doing well we're trying to collect a million words of spoken new zealand english with a maximum of five thousand words from any one speaker <,> inhales <,> so the answer ian is MASSES yes yes two hundred minimum yep tut and um <,,> one of the problems is that the staff there in the linguistics department are not new zealanders <,> tut terry's a <&>31:00 yorkshireman katherine's from liverpool sue kirk is from australia and freshly from australia audibly from australia and doug west although he has in fact been in new zealand for many many many years is australian by birth and he has a very young baby so that the amount of time that he's got to sort of <,> tut go round chatting to people is very limited voc so that voc these people are <,> rather prevented from going and chatting to folk because it is well known that people do what we call accommodate linguistically the people they're talking to so that if you <{1><[1>were talking to terry you might shift in his direction and he would certainly shift in your direction <,> er but it can actually affect the <{2><[2><,> the output so the only one who's a <&>next utterance with exaggerated NZ accent good genuine kiwi is good old me laughs <.>so <&>rest of utterance addressed to FG what time is your meal ready francie? <[1>oh somebody's <[2>so the only one who can do the interviews is a new zealander <&>32:00 oh just so i don't er <{><[>overstay <[>no problem it'll be about another <,> quarter of an hour fine okay well <.>we'll she has to do them all so as not to bias anyone's speaking habits <&>next utterance with exaggerated NZ accent <.>i'm <.>i'm <.>i'm i'm the only kiwi laughter all the others are are foreigners oh is that right yeah well terry's from yorkshire katherine's from liverpool sue is from australia and doug west was born in australia even if he has spent most of his life here tut oh so i'm the only genuine <,> kiwi mm so it falls to me to host all the sessions <.>to to <,> <{><[>chat people up <[>how do you get people i would've thought you'd end up with a very biased <{><[>sample <[>well you do if you go to your own friends obviously um one of the reasons <.>wh that terry did that radio talk was <{><[>to put out feelers mm <[>was to bring in people from a wider range um and <,,> um one of the things one of the things that that i'm doing is getting some of the secretaries around the university <&>33:00 tut who give you a slightly different group group of people <&>inhale um what you hope to do really is to get them to get some of their FRIENDS to cooperate mm right and um i've had a number of cleaning ladies in the past and i shall tut <{1><[1>get my cleaning ladies to laughs to chat to me <{2><[2>i know them <[1>mhm <[2>well <.>per perhaps you want the people ian plays golf with because they would be a fairly representative selection no they're probably <.>w better off oh true money <{><[>yes <[>yes i mean the <.>oth the other thing is that <.>y i have said to katherine we must get the cleaning ladies at the university <,> those few of them that are not <,> polynesians <,> tut er i mean the vast majority are polynesians and not new zealand born so that they are not <,> <{><[>suitable material <[>er they don't qualify voc mm oh <{><[>cos i mean the <.>people <[>does maori qualify oh yes we in fact are aiming to get twelve percent <{><[>of this sample maori as a representation of the population so i got my informant the other day <,> um <[>oh <&>34:00 our cleaner's a polynesian but <.>a a male aha yes <.>well interesting <{><[>interesting <[>some of the backgrounds yes mm <,> tut and the <.>other the other thing that <.>i <.>i i've said to katherine we MUST do is we must get the people on the BUILDING sites round the university as i walk past the buildings you know i hear these amazing conversations from up aloft laughter and i think yeah i just want my tape recorder right now because you know <.>tho that's a totally different section of the <{1><[1>population and harry orsman who um is working on the new zealand dictionary and who's not actually in linguistics has been a great frequenter of pubs and has collected many you know masses of of sort of nice data from the pubs and we're hoping to twist his arm and persuade HIM to go and chat up these blokes on the building sites because he would do it much better than any of the <{2><[2>rest of us <[1>yes <[2>you think he would have the right technique i mean i sort of feel RATHER ill at ease about the thought of going and trying to chat up a whole lot of men on a building site you might not be the most appropriate <{><[>person <[>might not be the most appropriate <{1><[1>person <&>35:00 that's what i feel <,> tut but it's actually <.>k it's quite difficult and we hope the other people from the other universities are also collecting data they're supposed to be but as far as <{2><[2>we <.>know <[1>no <[2>so how many conversations are you endeavouring to record altogether we were supposed to get a <.>h a million words of spoken new zealand english how many HOURS um you're going quite rapidly if you took three words a minute er three words a SECOND how many did aunt <.>ais er aunt daisy she was supposed to be a really <{><[>fast speaker wasn't she? <[>well <.>we yes we reckon that um something like a quarter of an hour's talk gives you about five thousand words mm laughter all right so it's quite a lot of talk involved <,,> but um it's a lot easier with a tape recorder then well yes um <,> but no these things are very it's very strange but <,> somebody has to actually go out and collect the data that's the big that's really the big problem <,> getting enough data <,> <&>36:00 but my my maori informant it's funny she said to me yes you can do it as long as i don't know you're doing it ah laughs <{><[>so <[>so i took my tape recorder along in my satchel i got a specially little tape recorder so it would fit in my satchel and i had this just draped over the outside of my satchel you see so it was fairly inconspicuous word i put that down under the table where she wouldn't see it <,> and i had the thing all set to go and on pause so all i had to do was gently press one button you see when i arrived and she didn't notice and i i said right she she she's a she's a member of the ratana church <,> and she'd been up to their easter conference <,> and i KNEW that when she came back i could get her to talk about ratana <,> tut and it WORKED like a charm you know i pressed the button and she she talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and WAS the recording satisfactory <&>37:00 well unfortunately there was a radio on in the background which was not very nice mm um but yes i think so tut and you know she was she was totally involved in explaining to me about the revelations of er <,> <{><[>and the miracles <[>you should try and record the talkback shows on the radio you actually have to have permission to do this from the individual speakers concerned oh one after the other mm? er yes um i mean you're actually not allowed <,> to use material of that kind without people's permission <,> um <{><[>mm <[>mm all right laughs i mean radio <.>is i mean we we will be getting some radio stuff but we're actually going to have to get permission from so you can't do things such as travelling in a bus or going into a public place of any kind yeah well we're not sure because we DO want some surreptitious data and <.>par you know we want to bug a few telephone conversations <{><[>so we want <.>to <[>oh now we know you can't do that we know you can't do that that's right um tut but we also want to um get a few sort of shop assistants' assistance <&>38:00 mm to get some recordings of <.>inter interchanges in shops but you'd have to have the customer <{><[>in on it as well <[>mm that's the problem mm it it really it really is a problem because there is this nasty legal thing about <,> theoretically you shouldn't <,> use people <,> unless you have their permission but as soon as you have their permission they know you're doing it <{><[>and they don't speak in the same manner <[><.>that's maybe mm mm <,> tut yes it's difficult there are all sorts of things about surreptitious recordings that are different from <,,> from sort of just listening except you know recordings where people are aware that the thing is there <,,> but it's just a case really of getting who we can mm <.>and <.>i is this adults only? <.>or have to be more than sixteen <{><[>yes otherwise it would be quite fun to go and tape five year olds but um their speech is immature in all SORTS of ways <&>39:00 <[>mm mm i mean <,,> i it it's it's fascinating i'm quite convinced that <&>inhale um while it's been commonly said in linguistic circles that kids basically know their language by the age of five that is NOT <,> my perception <&>inhale i would actually very much like to <,,> voc GET some data to trace the yes to <{><[>actually see <,> when it does happen <[>development <,> from one age to another mm <,> what would the indicators be well there are all sorts of things i mean one of the interesting things seems to me that keith's friends <.>wh i mean now they're about ten now all of them <,> STILL have the same phonological mistakes that they had when they were five <,> <{1><[1>tut so those of them that can't say keith <{2><[2><,> still can't say keith <[1>mm <[2>still can't say they still say keif all right mm <.>and but adults DON'T <&>40:00 adults don't <{><[>and <.>that's at what point? yes er i suspect that it's the sort of years of puberty when there is peer pressure <,> to suddenly drop what is seen as a baby habit <[>so at a specific moment mm when <,> thumb sucking must stop <{><[>if it hasn't before <[>well if it hasn't before <{><[>yes and always <[>mm or any anything that can be seen in ANY way as being <{1><[1>childish yes yes that's when i think these things get dropped inhales but syntactically as well i hear all sorts of strange things from keith's friends which suggest to me that they really still at the age of ten don't have <,,> er <,> proper command of their <{2><[2><,> own language <[1>less than grown up mm <[2>and sometime <{><[>between then and adulthood <[>er what do you hear from adults laughs yeah that i think is the interesting question i mean as a sort of <,,><&>3 measure of this you obviously have to have a <{1><[1>word body of adult speech to compare it with and <{2><[2>say okay this is obviously going to be what they're what they should be doing at <,> at the end of it this is what we have to take as as the goal <[1>the adult speech <[2>mm <&>41:00 yes at what point do they actually reach that goal because if the parents have mm <{><[>nonstandard or yes <[>less than perfect command then you can't expect that the <{><[>children <[>no <{><[>precisely <[>unless they have a different <{1><[1>life experience are going to <{2><[2>increase their command beyond their parents' <[1>right <[2>so yeah yeah so ideally what i think you would wish to do would be to record the same group of children <,> every year of their life from say five to fifteen mm and i think you would have to take it that by fifteen <,> they've got what they're going to have mm barring maybe a few words oh that would that is after that they're likely only to add items of vocabulary i'd've thought yes special interest areas right mm but ideally that's what you would do and then you would <,> you would have far too much data <,> you'd have to have a computer that could actually analyse it for you <&>42:00 tut <{><[>word <[>do you mean this is NOT being analysed by computer some of this will be <{><[>yes but computers are in fact not particularly good at linguistic analysis yet <[>mm well i can understand that word recognition would be a problem yes but i would've thought that once you'd identified the words you could use the computer to analyse <,> word frequency and things like that inhales yes i mean count lexical items is is okay <{1><[1>but er for computers to do syntactic analysis <{2><[2><,> is actually very difficult but i mean amongst other things we're interested in doing <,> syntactic analysis <[1>mm <[2>oh yes ah <{><[>artificial intelligence <,> knowledge engineering <[>er <{><[>yes i mean all of <.>these <[>mm and it doesn't work yet either laughter no well precisely so that a lot of this is actually gonna have to be done analysed manually mm how tedious how tedious yes <.>but we shall have a word with er the minister of education and say i think you'd better check up where your research money's going <&>43:00 laughter well <.>there there are to be two <.>post doctoral fellows one at canterbury and one here <,> next year <,> to work on this project and they're hoping to get somebody in one of the two appointments who will <,> know what there is to be known about <,> er machine parsing mm about syntactic analysis by machine so that we can get <,> you know done what we can by machine <,> but um <,> it's a fascinating field it is yes mm i was in fact reading a little bit about <,> one or two <,> examples of knowledge engineering that are <,> being taken on by our company in australia mhm one of them was to do with <,> the allocation of locomotives <,> within a railway system <{1><[1>where they SAID <,> that they had <,> six thousand locomotives <{2><[2>and they had two hundred people tut um apparently fulltime manually <&>44:00 allocating locomotives this doesn't feel real i'm going to have to <{3><[3>check whether it could possibly be so <[1>oh <[2>good <[3>that doesn't <.>sound it sounds as if there must be an extra NAUGHT on that <{><[>tally <[>well there may be laughter so um <{><[>that seems incredible <[>the major problem with the railways is losing wagons for months on sidings good lord and it's not just the wagons it's what's <{><[>loaded ON the wagons <[>what's IN them yes laughter yes perhaps that's what's happened to my curtains laughs oh you ever look at the wellington railway station even from <{1><[1>a photo from the <{2><[2>air and it's very very big <[1>yeah <[2>yes it's it's very messy too <{><[>mm <[>and um mm and the railways put in i think there's tendon computers there <,> they were reading the marks on the outside whenever they went past oh so they'd record at least that this wagon went <{><[>past here <[>past here laughter if you tried to track it back you would be able to find where it was last seen seen mm which would give you a better chance of finding <{><[>where it was now <&>45:00 <[>finding it that's amazing isn't it <,> no wonder railways are so inefficient <&>45:08