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In recent decades, the investigation of spoken language has become increasingly important in linguistic research. However, the spoken word is a fleeting phenomenon which is difficult to analyse and which requires an elaborate process of examination and appraisal. The Institute for the German Language (Institut für Deutsche Sprache) has the largest collection of recordings of spoken German, the German Speech Archive (Deutsches Spracharchiv [DSAv]). Up to now, the inadequate processing and accessibility of the valuable material held by the DSAv has been regarded as its major shortcoming. A solution to this problem is at hand now that a start has been made with the systematic modernization of the DSAv and, in particular, with the digitalization of its material. In recent years, we have been able to systematically exploit the unique opportunities provided by a new and easier form of access to the spoken language via the recorded sound signal, which can be realized digitally in the computer, and its linkage to the corresponding texts and documentary data. Through the integration of the existing data about the corpora and of the written versions of the texts into an information and full text database and through the linking of these data with the acoustic signal itself, it is now possible for us to construct a data pool which allows a better documentation of the material and provides rapid internal and external access to the sound recordings. Processed in such a way, the material of the German Speech Archive can now be regarded as having been saved for posterity. As a result, entirely new areas of inquiry and entirely new research perspectives have been opened up. This is true both for the work of the Institute itself and for linguistic research in German as a whole.
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