Background and history

FRED was compiled by the research group 'English Dialect Syntax from a Typological Perspective', based at the English Department of Freiburg University, Germany. The primary motivation for embarking on this task was the group's interest in morphosyntactic variation in British English dialects and the lack of a geographically well-balanced, easy-to-access, machine-readable corpus of speech. The wider theoretical framework of the FRED project is based on functional typology and the idea that language-internal variation, in English in this case, may be integrated into global patterns of variation among languages world-wide. The morphology and syntax of regional varieties is still a much neglected topic in dialect research in general. One reason is certainly that a great amount of data is usually needed for this type of research; another is that the relevant material is often difficult to elicit. FRED tries to fill this gap: the oral history interviews collected for this purpose provide the quantity of spontaneous speech data needed to investigate both frequent and medium-range features.

The compilation of recordings and transcripts for the corpus started in 2000, according to the following selection criteria:

• the main aim was to compile material for investigating morphosyntactic dialect features
• there was a preference for traditional dialect data, one reason being the comparability to other, already existing sources for studying morphosyntactic variation in the British Isles, such as the Survey of English Dialects
• tape recordings had to be in acceptable quality, ideally, but not necessarily, accompanied by transcripts
• the material had to be freely available to both the research group and researchers of future generations

Due to restricted time and resources there was a preference for already recorded material. All of the above criteria suggested one source which is hardly ever used for linguistic or dialectological purposes: oral history interviews. Tape and mini-disc copies were made of pre-selected original tape recordings made available by various fieldworkers, historians, local museums, libraries and archives from different locations in England, Scotland, Wales, the Hebrides and the Isle of Man. Back at Freiburg University, the tapes were digitised for protection and stored electronically. Those interviews deemed most suitable for our purposes were then transcribed by English native speakers and linguistically trained staff (more material is stored in Freiburg but could not be included in the current version of FRED). For a number of recordings, transcripts were readily available, the advantage in some being that they occasionally included unknown place names and specialist vocabulary, e.g. specialist tools, types of apples used for cider making, etc., the disadvantage in other cases being that the transcripts had been intended for oral history projects and represented mere summaries of interviews which to a great extent normalised the speakers' utterances and omitted those very features which are of interest to dialectologists. All pre-existing transcripts were therefore carefully checked against the corresponding recordings. Various morphological, syntactic and discourse features (e.g. zero relatives, double negation, repetitions and truncations) were re-inserted and paralinguistic features (e.g. laughter) were marked. Irrelevant phonetic and phonological features and instances of eye-dialect, on the other hand, were regularised, except for those which might be relevant from a morphosyntactic point of view (e.g. contracted forms like gonna). For a full description of the transcription guidelines please see the FRED and FRED-S manuals.

FRED was not designed as a sociolinguistic corpus per se, but a limited set of sociolinguistic variables is specified for each text (geographic details, age and sex of the speaker). As far as discourse is concerned, researchers should keep in mind that the interviewers, who to some extent controlled the conversations thematically, usually tried to keep in the background. Their comments and questions are clearly aimed at making the interviewees talk, which often results in longer stretches of monologue. Phonetic or phonological studies were not envisaged by the original research group, but linguists interested in these fields may find the sizable collection of audio recordings useful.