The calls are being collected on a new Intervoice RobotOperator
platform that has dramatically increased the LDC's ability to collect
telephone speech. The new system allows up to twelve two channel calls
or 24 one channel calls to go on at the same time. Up to 20 hours of
conversation can be stored before it is necessary to download data;
the download as well as many programming changes can be made without
interrupting the application itself. In effect, the application will
be operational for 24 hours per day.
The projects are as follows:
For Voice Across Hispanic America, we need native speakers of
Spanish (from any country) who can call an 800 telephone number and
spend five minutes on the telephone reading a series of sentences.
Participants can receive $5.00 for their time.
For CallHome, native speakers of English, Egyptian Arabic, German,
Japanese, Mandarin and Spanish can make a free call to another native
speaker from an 800 telephone number anywhere in the world and talk
for 30 minutes. Participants can receive either $10.00 or free
telephone time.
For CallFriend, native speakers of English, Spanish, Tamil, Hindi,
Japanese, French, Farsi, German, Korean, Egyptian Arabic and Vietnamese can
can make a free call to another native speaker from an 800 telephone
number anywhere in the U.S., Canada or Puerto Rico and talk free for 30
minutes. Participants can receive either $10.00 or free telephone time.
Individuals or organizations who can recruit at least ten callers
should contact us to discuss various incentive programs for all three
projects. The recordings will be used for nonprofit scientific research
and instructional purposes, and are made available to researchers
and educators from all over the world on an equal basis.
To receive more information, or to get a Personal Identification
Number and instructions for making calls, please call us at
1-800-380-PENN (7366) between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. EST, or send email to
one of the following addresses:
Voice Across Hispanic America vaha@unagi.cis.upenn.edu
CallHome callhome@unagi.cis.upenn.edu
CallFriend callfriend@unagi.cis.upenn.edu
For further information about the project or for other information
about the Linguistic Data Consortium, please contact us
ldc@unagi.cis.upenn.edu, or you can access our WWW Home Page at
ftp://www.cis.upenn.edu/pub/ldc_www/hpage.html. You can also send
mail to us at the address below:
Rebecca Finch | Linguistic Data Consortium
Research Coordinator | 441 Williams Hall
finch@unagi.cis.upenn.edu | University of Pennsylvania
Tel: 215/898-0464 / Fax: 215/573-2175 | Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305