Data

The Sydney Speaks Lifespan Corpus

Also known as: SSLC
The Australian National University
Viewed: [[ro.stat.viewed]] Cited: [[ro.stat.cited]] Accessed: [[ro.stat.accessed]]
ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Adc&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2FANDS&rft_id=info:doi10.25911/0nnt-5f94&rft.title=The Sydney Speaks Lifespan Corpus&rft.identifier=10.25911/0nnt-5f94&rft.publisher=The Australian National University&rft.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.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.&rft.creator=Anonymous&rft.date=2025&rft.relation=https://doi.org/10.25911/0E9J-EQ77&rft.coverage=Sydney&rft_rights= http://legaloffice.weblogs.anu.edu.au/content/copyright/&rft_rights= http://www.ausgoal.gov.au/restrictive-licence-template&rft_subject=Linguistics&rft_subject=LANGUAGE, COMMUNICATION AND CULTURE&rft_subject=Corpus linguistics&rft_subject=Phonetics and speech science&rft_subject=Sociolinguistics&rft_subject=Linguistics&rft_subject=Language variation and change&rft_subject=Language change over the lifespan&rft_subject=Sociolinguistics&rft_subject=Australian English&rft_subject=Australian history&rft_subject=Ethnicity&rft.type=dataset&rft.language=English Access the data
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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.

Contact Information

Postal Address:
School of Literature Languages & Linguistics Research School of Humanities & the Arts 110 Ellery Crescent, Baldessin Precinct The Australian National University ACT 2600 Australia

Street Address:
Ph: 02 6125 0634(50634)

[email protected]
[email protected]

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.

Notes

20.
20 GB.

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.

Created: 2019

Data time period: 2019 to 1977

This dataset is part of a larger collection

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Spatial Coverage And Location

text: Sydney

Subjects
Australian English | Australian history | Corpus Linguistics | Ethnicity | Language, Communication and Culture | Language change over the lifespan | Language variation and change | Linguistics | Linguistics | Phonetics and Speech Science | Sociolinguistics | Sociolinguistics |

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