TAUS – The spoken language investigation in Oslo

The material from TAUS (The spoken language investigation in Oslo) is based on informal interviews with people from Oslo. The interviews were made in 1971-73. The informants are mainly from two eastern districts (Vålerenga and Kampen) and a western (Frogner), and have a social background that can be considered representative with respect to education, occupation and place of adolescence. The informants fall into three groups based on age: youth (15 – 17 years), young adults (20 – 30) and adults (34 – 75).

The topics for the interviews are experiences and descriptions from childhood and adolescence. The interviews were conducted at home with an unceremoniously and informal tone, so that the linguistic style can be described as informal vernacular.

In 2006 – 2007 the TAUS-tapes from the A and B series were digitized, and all the interviews were transcribed orthographically and linked to the digital audio files. The transcriptions are now searchable via the search interface tool Glossa.

In 2014 – 2019 the tapes from the B-series were digitized and transcribed during the LIA-project (https://www.hf.uio.no/iln/english/research/projects/language-infrastructure-made-accessible/index.html).

In January 2020 TAUS v.3 was published with all available material from the A, B og C series. TAUS v.3 has 86 speakers and 387 551 tokens.