CABank Japanese Sakura Corpus

Susanne Miyata Department of Medical Sciences Aichi Shukotoku University smiyata@asu.aasa.ac.jp website

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Project Description

This corpus of 18 conversations is the product of six graduation theses on gender differences in students' group talk. Each conversation lasted between 12 and 35 minutes (avg. 25 minutes) resulting in an overall time of 7 hours and 30 minutes. 31 Students (19 female, 12 male) participated in the study (Table 1). The participants gathered in groups of 4 students, either of the same or the opposite sex (6 conversations with a group of 4 female students, 6 with 4 male students, and 6 conversations with 2 male and 2 female students), according to age (first and third year students) and affiliation (two academic departments). In addition, the participants of each conversation came from the same small-sized class and were well acquainted.

The participants were informed that their conversations may be transcribed and a video recorded for use in possible publication when recruited. Additionally, permission was asked once more after the transcription in cases where either private information had been displayed, or a misunderstanding concerning the nature and degree of the publication of the conversations became apparent during the conversation.

The recordings took place in a small conference room at the university between or after lectures. The participants were given a card with a conversation topic to start with, but were free to vary (topic 1 "What do you expect from an opposite sex friend?" [isee ni motomeru koto]; topic 2 "Are you a dog lover or a cat lover?" [inuha ka nekoha ka]; topic 3 "About part-time work" [arubaito ni tsuite]). The investigator was not present during the recording. The combination of participants, the topic, and the duration of the 18 conversations are given in Table 2.

The participants produced 15,449 utterances overall (female: 8,027 utterances, male: 7,422 utterances). All utterances were linked to video and transcribed in regular Japanese orthography and Latin script (Wakachi2002), and provided with morphological tags (JMOR04.1). Proper names were replaced by pseudonyms.

Table 1: List of participants, sex, age, and their quantity of appearances

ID	Age	Sex	#	ID	Age	Sex	#
A1F	19	female	3	I3F	21	female	1
B1F	19	female	5	K3F	21	female	1
C1F	19	female	2	L3F	21	female	3
D1F	19	female	3	A1M	19	male	3
E1F	19	female	2	B1M	19	male	3
F1F	19	female	1	C1M	19	male	5
G1F	19	female	1	D1M	19	male	3
H1F	19	female	1	E1M	21	male	4
A3F	21	female	2	G3M	21	male	5
B3F	21	female	2	H3M	21	male	4
C3F	21	female	2	I3M	21	male	4
D3F	21	female	1	J3M	21	male	2
E3F	21	female	2	K3M	22	male	1
F3F	21	female	1	L3M	21	male	1
G3F	21	female	2	M3M	21	male	1
H3F	21	female	1

Table 2: Specifications of the 18 conversations

File	Participants	Sex	Topic	Duration
sakura01	G3M H3M K3F L3F	MF	1	26'00"
sakura02	A1F B1F C1M B1M	MF	1	35'30"
sakura03	H3F I3F J3M K3M	MF	2	11'45"
sakura04	H1F B1F C1M E1M	MF	2	26'25"
sakura05	I3M G3M L3F E3F	MF	3	27'20"
sakura06	G1F F1F E1M D1M	MF	3	26'00"
sakura07	D3F F3F L3F E3F	FF	1	25'00"
sakura08	E1F B1F C1F D1F	FF	1	28'25"
sakura09	E1F B1F A1F D1F	FF	2	27'00"
sakura10	A3F B3F C3F G3F	FF	2	25'15"
sakura11	A1F B1F C1F D1F	FF	3	25'25"
sakura12	A3F B3F C3F G3F	FF	3	23'55"
sakura13	G3M H3M I3M J3M	MM	1	21'20"
sakura14	B1M A1M E1M C1M	MM	1	30'00"
sakura15	I3M H3M G3M M3M	MM	2	25'50"
sakura16	E1M A1M C1M D1M	MM	2	23'30"
sakura17	L3M G3M I3M H3M	MM	3	26'45"
sakura18	A1M B1M C1M D1M	MM	3	16'50"

Additional contributors: Banno, Kyoko; Konishi, Saya; Matsui, Ayumi; Matsumoto, Shiori; Oogi, Rie; Takahashi, Akane; Muraki, Kyoko.