The DIG Mandarin Conversations (DMC) Corpus
Journal Article
Overview
abstract
Abstract; This paper introduces the DMC Corpus – a newly collected dataset of 150 mundane cell phone calls; from Mainland China in Mandarin Chinese (audio and detailed transcripts) – which is now publicly available for use in research and; teaching. In this report, we first describe the constitution and current contents of the DMC Corpus, as well as instructions for; access. Additional calls will be added periodically to the Corpus, and so the quantitative overview presented here should be; considered conservative. We then provide concrete examples of the sorts of phenomena that might be explored with these new data,; underscoring how the Corpus offers researchers the ability to build systematic collections for analysis – no matter whether; researchers prefer to begin with ‘forms’ (e.g., utterance-final particles), with ‘functions’ (e.g., complaining), and/or with the; temporal organization of interaction itself (e.g., preference organization, repair). The paper concludes with an explicit call for; increased research on Mandarin conversation, to which we hope the materials in the DMC Corpus will contribute.
