Online Access Tools for Spoken German: The Resources of the Deutsches Spracharchiv in a Database

This paper shows some details of the modernization of the Deutsches Spracharchiv (DSAv). It explores some future possibilities of linguistical documentation and analysis using the Web. The Institut für Deutsche Sprache (IDS) in Mannheim is the central institution for linguistic research in Germany. The DSAv in the IDS is the center for documentation and research of spoken German. These archives include the largest collection of sound recordings of spoken German (dialects and colloquial speech, including e.g. lots of extinct dialects of former German territories in Eastern Europe) - altogether more than 15,000 sound recordings. The lacking clarification and accessibility of this data material has been felt as an essential deficit. The opportunity to edit the sound signal digitally offers a much easier access to spoken language. Through the integration of the already existing information about the corpora and the transcribed texts in an information- and full text databank, as well as the linking of the data with the acoustic signal (alignment), arises a data-pool with considerably better documentation of the materials and a fast direct grasp of the recorded sounds. Thus, the DSAv initiates totally new research questions for the work at the IDS, as well as for linguistics altogether