The Grammar of Spoken Singapore English Corpus (GSSEC)

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The Grammar of Spoken Singapore English Corpus (GSSEC)
managed by
Dr. Lisa Lim
lisa.ls.lim@gmail.com
School of English, University of Hong Kong
GROUND RULES & CONVENTIONS
2006, revised 2009
GSSEC usage
The Grammar of Spoken Singapore English Corpus (GSSEC) was collected for the project Towards a
Reference Grammar of Singapore English, which was funded by a National University of Singapore
Academic Research Grant R-103-000-003-112 (Lisa Lim and Joseph A. Foley, principal
investigators; Vivienne Fong, Ni Yi-Bin and Lionel Wee, project members; 1998-2001). GSSEC,
collected in the period 1998-99, comprises 32 recorded extracts, coming to approximately 8 hours of
conversation, totalling over 60,000 words, of naturally-occurring spontaneous discourse of native
Singapore English speakers, varying along a number of demographic variables, such as age, gender,
ethnic group, and education level. [The data have also been incorporated into the Singapore
component of the International Corpus of English (ICE-SIN).] The recordings are accompanied by
orthographic transcriptions.
Researchers are welcome to use the corpus. Requests should be sent to Dr. Lisa Lim
(lisa.ls.lim@gmail.com), with a usage declaration form filled out. Users must acknowledge GSSEC as
a source in their research (citing Lim 2001 and Lim and Foley 2004), and should send a copy of any
resources derived from the data (publications, additional annotations or analyses, etc.) to Lisa Lim.
Coding conventions of recordings
The current coding, revised by Zhu Shenfa in 2001 from the original coding, has the format:
T1.1a-I
where:
 T = tape
 the number following T = the (serial) number of the tape
 the number following the period = the number of the extract on that tape
 the letter a, b, c, etc following the number = the speaker in that extract
 the letter C, M, I following the hyphen = the ethnic group of that speaker, where C = Chinese, M
= Malay, I = Indian
Transcription conventions
(…)
****
…
<…>
?
!
Italics
‘…’
{
Contextual information and comments on utterances.
Unintelligible and untranscribable segments.
Marks a pause.
Orthographic transcription of sound(s) made by speaker.
Marks the end of an interrogative utterance.
Marks the end of an exclamative utterance.
Utterance in other language, followed by the language used, in parentheses.
# Approximate equivalent in English of utterance made in another language.
Denotes simultaneous speech
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Analysis and description


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For a detailed report of the project Towards a Reference Grammar of Singapore English, see Lim
(2001).
For detailed background on the sociohistorical context of Singapore English, as well as on the
compilation of GSSEC, see Lim and Foley (2004).
For a structural description of Singapore English based on GSSEC, see the chapters in Lim
(2004a).
For a description of intonation patterns of Singapore English based on GSSEC, see Lim (2004b)
and Zhu (2003).
References
Lim, Lisa. 2001. Towards a reference grammar of Singapore English. Final Research Report,
Academic Research Fund, National University of Singapore.
Lim, Lisa (ed.). 2004a. Singapore English: A Grammatical Description. (Varieties of English Around
the World G33.) Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Lim, Lisa. 2004b. Sounding Singaporean. In Lisa Lim (ed.). Singapore English: A Grammatical
Description. (Varieties of English Around the World G33.) Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John
Benjamins. 19-56.
Lim, Lisa and Joseph A. Foley. 2004. English in Singapore and Singapore English: Background and
methodology. In Lisa Lim (ed.). Singapore English: A Grammatical Description. (Varieties of
English Around the World G33.) Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 1-18.
Zhu Shenfa. 2003. Intonation in Singapore English: An auditory and acoustic analysis of four
sentence types. PhD thesis. National University of Singapore.
Other output from the project (selected; to 2004)
Ansaldo, Umberto. 2004. In Lisa Lim (ed.). Singapore English: A Grammatical Description.
(Varieties of English Around the World G33.) Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 127149.
Fong, Vivienne. 2001. An aspectual typology in Optimality Theory. Perspectives on Aspect
conference. Utrecht Institute of Linguistics OTS. 12-14 December 2001.
Fong, Vivienne. 2004. The verbal cluster. In Lisa Lim (ed.). Singapore English: A Grammatical
Description. (Varieties of English Around the World G33.) Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John
Benjamins.75-104.
Ho Hwee Hoon Angeline. 2000. Discourse Factors in Singapore English Wh- Questions. BA Honours
thesis. Department of English Language & Literature, National University of Singapore.
Ni, Yibin. 1999. The Singapore Component of the International Corpus of English and Its Initial
Exploration. 4th English in Southeast Asia Conference: Developing Multiliteracies in Southeast
Asia. Singapore. 22-24 November 1999.
Ni Yibin. 2001. Some characteristics of noun phrases in Singapore English found in the Grammar of
Singapore English Corpus. RELC conference. Singapore. 23-25 April 2001.
Wee, Lionel. 2002. ‘Lor’ in Colloquial Singaporean English. Journal of Pragmatics 34:6. 711-725.
Wee, Lionel and Umberto Ansaldo. 2004. Nouns and noun phrases. In Lisa Lim (ed.). Singapore
English: A Grammatical Description. (Varieties of English Around the World G33.) Amsterdam/
Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 57-74.
Wee, Lionel. 2004. Reduplication and discourse particles. In Lisa Lim (ed.). Singapore English: A
Grammatical Description. (Varieties of English Around the World G33.) Amsterdam/
Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 105-126.
Zhu, Shenfa and Lisa Lim. 1999. Intonation in Singapore English: Forms and functions. 4th English in
Southeast Asia Conference: Developing Multiliteracies in Southeast Asia. Singapore. 22-24
November 1999.
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