Embedded Files
Data for the Syntactic Ecology of Kaaps (SEcoKa) project were collected from a variety of sources, including (1) contemporary written narratives, (2) spontaneous transcribed speech, and (3) WhatsApp messenger voice notes (VNs) and text messages (TMs).
- Contemporary written narratives
Wit Issie ‘n Colour Nie (‘White Isn’t a Colour’; Kwela: 2018), a collection of short stories by Nathan Trantraal, who was born in 1983 and grew up in Mitchell’s Plain and Bishop Lavis on the Cape Flats.
Kinnes (‘Children’; Kwela: 2018), a novella by Chase Rhys, who was born in 1989 and grew up in Ocean View on the Cape Peninsula.
Innie Shadows (‘In the Shadows’; Modjaji: 2019), a crime fiction novel by Olivia Coetzee, who grew up in Electric City on the Cape Flats.
These texts were selected because the authors all self-identify as Kaaps speakers and made a conscious choice to write in Kaaps (as opposed to standardised Afrikaans). Furthermore, the authors are of similar age, and all grew up in the greater Cape Town region. The texts themselves are also contemporary as they were published within a year of one another. The size of the written narratives sub-corpus is roughly 134 000 words.
2. Spontaneous transcribed speech
2. Spontaneous transcribed speech
The collection of spontaneous transcribed speech currently includes one-on-one dialogue between Kaaps speakers in eight locations around the greater Cape Town area, namely Bo-Kaap, Heideveld, Kensington, Kuils River, Maitland, Manenberg, Mitchell’s Plain, and Paarl (see Map X).
In Kensington, Kuils River, Manenberg, Mitchell’s Plain, and Paarl, 3 or 4 conversations were recorded with 3 or 4 participants. Each speaker participated in 2 conversations, each time with a different partner. In the first conversation, participants were paired with speakers of a similar age and language background. In the second conversation, participants engaged with a much older/younger speaker, or a speaker with a different language background. This was in order to collect data that could in some sense be sensitive to the effect of the dialogical space on speakers’ linguistic choices.
In Bo-Kaap, Heideveld, and Maitland, one conversation was recorded between a local participant and an interviewer with whom the participant was well acquainted.
One of the sites, namely Paarl, is located in the Boland region, which is geographically relatively distant from the other sites which are all located on the Cape Peninsula or the Cape Flats. Nonetheless, speakers in Paarl do identify as Kaaps speakers, and the Paarl variety therefore offers an interesting opportunity for comparison with the Peninsula varieties. The current size of the transcribed spontaneous speech sub-corpus is roughly 79 000 words.
3. WhatsApp messenger data
3. WhatsApp messenger data
The WhatsApp messenger data comprises:
430 VNs, resulting in roughly 38 minutes of self-recorded, individual speech, collected from 20 speakers residing in various places around the greater Cape Town region.
X TMs, collected from the same individuals, resulting in a sub-corpus of X words.
This data was collected from a ‘One-A-Day’ group chat translation exercise, where participants were given one English sentence or short dialogue to translate into Kaaps each day for a total of 32 days. Participants were organised into group chats with between 3 and 5 members, and were required to provide both spoken (VN) and written (TM) responses to each item. Thus, in theory, for each VN response provided by a participant, there is a corresponding TM.
SEcoKa transcription conventions
To ensure consistency and the preservation of Kaaps spoken language features, we developed a transcription protocol for the project. This was used to train transcribers for the transcription and checking of the spontaneous speech transcripts.
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