Database of Tsuruoka Survey
(Longitudinal Database of Language Survey in Tsuruoka City)
Tsuruoka Hotel (taken by Takahito Abe）
A database of a longitudinal series of surveys on language standardization conducted in Tsuruoka City, Yamagata
Prefecture (surveyed in 1950, 1971, 1991 and 2011) has been released. In addition, speech data from the third
survey is also available via the National Institute of Informatics.
The 2011 survey (the 4th survey) was implemented as part of a joint research between the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics and the Institute of Statistical Mathematics.
The Database of Tsuruoka Survey is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
The 2011 survey (the 4th survey) was implemented as part of a joint research between the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics and the Institute of Statistical Mathematics.
The Database of Tsuruoka Survey is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Database of Tsuruoka Survey ver. 4.0
This database contains data from responses to the first (1950), second (1971), third (1991), and fourth (2011) surveys (attribute items, phonetic/phonological items, and vocabulary/grammar items).Vocabulary/grammar items of data (based on responses from the first to fourth surveys) have been added to ver. 4.0.
Database of Tsuruoka Survey ver. 4.0
Database of Tsuruoka Survey ver. 4.0 Comments
Earlier versions
Database of Tsuruoka Survey ver. 3.1
Database of Tsuruoka Survey ver. 3.1 Comments
Database of Tsuruoka Survey ver. 2.0
Database of Tsuruoka Survey ver. 2.0 Comments (Revised)
List of Revisions to the Database of Tsuruoka Survey (December 20, 2017)
Database of Tsuruoka Survey ver. 1.0
Database of Tsuruoka Survey ver. 1.0 Comments
Speech Database of the 1991-1992 Tsuruoka Survey (Tsuruoka 91-92)
This is speech data from the third Tsuruoka Survey. This database was created by the Working Committee for the
Release of the Tsuruoka Survey Database from 2008 through 2010.
It is available through the Speech Resources Consortium (SRC) of the National Institute of Informatics. It
contains speech data on phonetic/phonological items and vocabulary/grammar items surveyed in 1991 and 1992.
For details of the data and how to obtain it, please visit the website of the SRC.
Speech Database of the 1991-1992 Tsuruoka Survey (Tsuruoka 91-92)
Corpus acquisition procedure
What is the Tsuruoka Survey?
 Tsuruoka City, Yamagata Pref. |
 Random sampling |
 "Panel research" |
The questionnaire items used in the Tsuruoka Survey comprise "language" items and "linguistic life" items. The former are about phonological aspects, accents, vocabulary, grammar, etc., while the latter are about linguistic behavior and attitudes.
All of the surveys, from the first to the fourth, were conducted on informants sampled randomly from the register for the distribution of supplies, Basic Resident Register, and other lists. Methodologically speaking, the Tsuruoka Survey has the following three characteristics:
(1) It is the world's longest-standing "real-time survey" on language change.
(2) It is a "trend survey" that has been implemented by conducting four questionnaire surveys
using basically the same questions on about 400 informants sampled randomly each time, at intervals of around
twenty years.
(3) It also contains data from "panel research", in which trend survey respondents were tracked
longitudinally, at about twenty-year intervals, using basically the same questions.
Tsuruoka Survey is described in the following reference (pp.213-216).
Chambers,J. K. Sociolinguisic Theory. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 2002.