The Interactive atlas of Valencian intonation website contains a whole series of oral materials in audio and video format intended to provide the basis for further in-depth studies of Valencian prosody. These materials are organized according to the standard geographical dialect areas designated for Catalan (see. maps of dialects):

• Septentrional Valencian
• Central Valencian
• Meridional Valencian

Currently we have collected data from 29 different Valencian locales from distinct dialectal areas. Regarding the selection of locales, it was decided to include: a) the capital cities of each island, and b) all population centers that are relatively large and have particular or unique dialectal characteristics relative to the variety of Catalan spoken in the islands.

In every locale we interviewed speakers of different age groups. In the intonation survey and in the Map Task dialogue corpus we interviewed women between the ages of 20 and 35 year with university or higher level education. As for the videotaped interview the speakers included men and women older than 60 years of age. Participants had been born and raised in the locale.

In terms of content, for each population center selected, data was obtained by means of three main methods:

 

A. Intonation survey

Examples of different types of utterance (roughly 50 contours per locale) were taken from among the responses to an intonation survey. This survey was based on that used by Prieto (2001) and is designed to evoke everyday situations. It is an inductive method in which the researcher presents the subject with a series of situations (such as “You go into a shop you have never been in before and ask the shop assistant if they sell sugar”) and then asks him or her to respond accordingly. This method is especially useful because it allows the researcher to obtain a wide range of intonation contours that are difficult to obtain with other methods.

The survey consisted of approximately 50 situations, each intended to elicit a particular type of utterance. Utterances were organized as follows:

• Declaratives
• Absolute interrogatives
• Partial interrogatives
• Reiterative questions
• Requests and orders
• Vocatives

The intonation pattern for each utterance is described in a file which contains the fundamental frequency contour as measured using the Pitchworks program, the audio file, a description of the melodic curve, the ToBI prosodic labeling (see Cat-ToBI), an interpretation (in Valencian) of the utterance, and a plot of the intonation contour.

 

B. Map Task Dialogue Corpus

The Map Task is a validated technique in which two subjects cooperate to complete a specified task. It is designed to cause the subjects to produce particular interrogative patterns. Each of the two subjects has a map of an imaginary town marked with buildings and other specific elements such as fountains and monuments. A route is marked on the map of one of the two participants (to see this version of the map, use this link: map-giver), and that person has the role of the instruction-giver. The version of the same map held by the other participant (see map-follower) differs from that of the instruction-giver in that it does not show the route to be followed. The second participant therefore has to ask the instruction-giver questions in order to be able to reproduce the same route on his or her own map.

Roughly 46 records have been obtained thus far by means of this method and make up the Catalan Map Task Dialogue Corpus. An audio recording of the performance of the Map Task and its corresponding orthographic transcription (see transcription criteria) can be accessed for each locale. The participating subjects were women aged between 20 and 35 years with a secondary or university education.

This project is part of an international research program whose aim is to collect dialogue corpora from different languages following the Map Task methodology standard (vg. HCRC Map Task Corpus Project). Currently the map task corpora includes data from English, Swedish, Dutch, Italian, Japanese, and Portuguese.

 

C. Videotaped conversations

For each locale the Atlas group conducted interviews of 10 to 15 minutes. A representative segment of conversation has been chosen for each locale and posted on this website. The segment is available in both audio and video formats (although the video format has restricted access) and the corresponding orthographical transcription (see transcription criteria) is also provided.

 

• All data, in different formats, are available for free through our website for academic and research purposes.