FRENCH ORAL SPEECH CORPORA: THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL ASPECTS

Abstract

The paper describes the issues of the origin, development, distribution and use of French oral speech corpora. The specifics of collecting, constituting and treatment of oral data were also analyzed. The choice of the French investigation tradition was caused by the fact that it is not well-known in Ukrainian corpus research. It was noted that the development of oral speech corpora by French researchers occurred with a delay, mainly due to technical reasons. The compilers of early collections of sound texts followed their own rules of recording, transcribing and saving, so today it is almost impossible to use them. Based on the analysis of the available speech corpora, it was found that they are characterized by heterogeneity, a variety of purposes for their creating, including scientific ones, and blurred chronological boundaries. Dissimilarity in researchers’ epistemological orientations, differences in knowledge and tools, corpora’s heterogeneousness involve a diversity of methodological approaches to their constitution and usage. It is worth mentioning that the insufficiency of big and multi-level oral speech corpora in terms of their quantity, quality and scientific reliability, is directly related to the conditions of their implementation and depends on a combination of scientific, technological and institutional factors. Oral data treatment involves transcription, which includes technological, theoretical and interpretation issues. In conclusion, it should be emphasized that the constitution and the use of French speech corpora are not limited to voice recordings and purely technical aspects as they acquire importance in the openness and availability of their data.