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Hermann J. Künzel: Eine Datenbank regionaler Umgangssprachen des Deutschen (DRUGS) für forensische Anwendungen

The present article describes the basic features of a multimedial database of regional varieties of colloquial German (DRUGS), which has been conceived in the first instance as a tool in crime-detection for the identification of persons on the basis of their verbal behaviour. This system, which is based on Windows 98 and has been tested in daily forensic use for the last two years, has been set up as an open modular system, so that the initial empirical basis of 182 persons from Germany, Austria and Switzerland can be enlarged at will. It is possible to subject the data to phonological, morphological and orthographic investigation. On a phonetic level, the data can be presented acoustically and as a pre-segmented oscillogram, which can be further segmented by the user. The link to a map on which the German dialect areas are marked allows data to be drawn randomly from the places surveyed and, conversely, the geographical assignment of research results to a particular place among those surveyed. DRUGS has a variety of possible applications in the study of linguistic variation, which can be extended still further through the systematic enlargement of the number and widening of the structural variety of the places recorded in the database.