Since 1981 our research group has been collecting materials written in Krio, a West African Creole language spoken primarily in Sierra Leone. Despite the fact that we have used parts of it in our research for a number of years now, we have not been able to systematically compile all the material yet.
The Krio corpus project aims at creating a language database of Krio. It will contain both written and oral texts in Krio from different genres and media, and the project will comprise four phases: a) collection of material, b) digitalisation, c) systematisation and d) publication on the Net.
During the initial stage an inventory of our present Krio material will be made, the material will be compiled and new material will be collected. During the second stage the material not already digitalised, will be re-worked into digital form (sound and video recordings will also be digitalised and transcribed). The systematisation of the material will entail indexing for easy access, tagging of texts and the establishment of an overarching structure for the corpus. Phase four, publication on the Net, will entail making the Krio corpus accessible to the research community in the form of a web site at the Department of Modern Languages at Umeå University.
Our Krio corpus will hopefully contribute to the development of creolistics in general and, in particular, make possible the writing of a grammar of Krio and the production of school textbooks in the language.
