HCRC Map Task Corpus
| Item Name: | HCRC Map Task Corpus |
| Author(s): | University of Edinburgh |
| LDC Catalog No.: | LDC93S12 |
| ISBN: | 1-58563-009-8 |
| ISLRN: | 777-455-577-608-1 |
| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.35111/9ge9-6c05 |
| Member Year(s): | 1993, 1996 |
| DCMI Type(s): | Sound |
| Sample Type: | 2-channel pcm |
| Sample Rate: | 20000 |
| Data Source(s): | microphone conversation |
| Application(s): | discourse analysis |
| Language(s): | English |
| Language ID(s): | eng |
| License(s): |
LDC User Agreement for Non-Members |
| Online Documentation: | LDC93S12 Documents |
| Licensing Instructions: | Subscription & Standard Members, and Non-Members |
| Citation: | University of Edinburgh. HCRC Map Task Corpus LDC93S12. Web Download. Philadelphia: Linguistic Data Consortium, 1993. |
| Related Works: | View |
Introduction
HCRC Map Task Corpus was developed by the University of Edinburgh and contains a total of about 18 hours of spontaneous speech that was recorded from 128 two-person conversations. The speakers were students at the University of Glasgow; most were native Scots.
Data
There were 64 different speakers: 32 female, 32 male, all adults, each taking part in four conversations. The conversations were carried out in an experimental setting, in which each participant had a schematic map in front of them that was not visible to the other. Each map was comprised of an outline and roughly a dozen labelled features (e.g. a white cottage, an oak forest, Green Bay, etc.). Most features were common to the two maps, but not all. One map contained a drawn route but the other did not. The task required the participant whose map did not contain the route to draw one based on discussions with their partner. In addition to the task conversations, the corpus includes a word list read by each speaker consisting of the major vocabulary items contained in the conversations.
The experimental design allows a number of different phonemic, syntactico-semantic and pragmatic contrasts to be explored in a controlled way. In particular, maps and feature names were designed to allow for controlled exploration of phonological reductions of various kinds in a number of different referential contexts and to provide, via varying patterns of matches and mismatches between the two maps, a range of different stimuli for referent negotiation. Also, the conditions of the conversations were carefully balanced: In half of them the talkers were strangers, in half friends. In half of them the talkers could see each other's faces, in half they could not.
Originally published as a set of eight CD-ROMS, HCRC Map Task Corpus is now delivered as a web download. The contents of each disc reside in separate directories with the same structure as the original set. The waveform data are provided in raw (headerless) files (16-bit samples, 20 kHz sample rate, two channels per conversation) and alternative header files are provided for use with software based on either the NIST SPHERE header structure or the European SAM header structure. Text transcriptions are provided for each conversation, along with PostScript files of the map images used in the experiments. Additional materials include full documentation of the experimental design and data collection protocol, resources for using SGML tools on the transcriptions and other text materials and an extensive set of source code for performing basic signal processing functions on the waveform data, such as down-sampling, de-multiplexing, channel summation and D/A conversion for Sun workstations (including playback of segments selected via inspection of transcripts in Emacs).
Samples
Please view the following samples:
Updates
None at this time.