Child Language Data Exchange System

1
CHILDES

• Child Language Data Exchange System
• Founded 1984 in Concord MA
• Director Brian MacWhinney macw_at_mac.com
• Programmers Leonid Spektor, Franklin Chen
• 4500 Members
• 130 corpora
• 1500 published articles

2
Why study child language?

• Special Gift -- Universals
• Typology -- Variation
• Emergentism -- Processes
• Language Disorders -- Differences
• Socialization, Literacy
• Language Maintenance

3
Universals

• Are there basic patterns to babbling?
• Are early word orders universal?
• Does UG give children a universal set of
  functional categories?
• Is the vocabulary spurt universal?
• We need LOTS of data

4
Differences

• Do children have individual styles?
• Gestalt vs. Analytic
• Enactive (1S) vs. Depictive (3S)
• Do children respond differentially to parental
  recasts?
• Do children vary in their match to cue validity?
• Again, we need LOTS of data.

5
Comparisons

• How should we match SLI children to normal
  controls -- MLU? Morphology, TTR
• How should we compare language socialization
  processes across social classes? Between
  cultures?
• How should we compare the course of development
  across languages? The case of Romance.

6
Getting Set Up

• Connect to http//childes.psy.cmu.edu

7
Ground Rules

• Ethical use, informed consent
• Levels of permission
• Respect for dignity of participants
• Respect for contributors
• Requirement to cite sources
• Requirement to contribute data

8
Info-CHILDES and Membership

• Subscribe to kelley.sacco_at_cmu.edu
• Archived at LinguistList
• Info-CHIBolts for nuts and bolts
• Membership list
• IASCL Membership

9
Why no handout?

• Overviews link has this PPT presentation
• CHILDES is now fully electronic. No more paper.

10
Assumed computer platform

• A modern XML browser, IE5, Navigator 7, Safari,
  Firefox
• QuickTime and Flash
• Acrobat Reader
• Zip
• Unicode fonts
• PPT

11
Getting Set Up

• Download CLAN from Programs link

12
Which version of CLAN?

• Windows 98 - clanwin.exe
• Windows 2000/XP - clanwinu.exe
• OSX - CLANX
• Grab Arial Unicode while you are here too

13
Installing

• Mac
• Trash old version
• Unstuff and drag new version anywhere
• Windows
• Add/remove programs to remove old versions
• Autoinstall to c\childes\clan

14
Windows issues

• You can work in c\childes
• But your administrator may have this locked.
• So, you may need shortcuts.
• Windows IPA is difficult.

15
Downloading Manuals

• CHAT, CLAN

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Getting Started

• Open CLAN Manual to Chapter 2
• Double-click application
• Control-D to open Commands Window
• Set Working Directory to
• c\childes\clan\lib\samples

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Should look like this

• Windows will be c\childes\clan\lab\samples

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Run FREQ

• Freq sample.cha
• Hit RUN or carriage return
• In output, does want occur 3 times?

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Interface Features

• Help
• CLAN
• Files In
• Recall
• Set MOR, Lib, Output directories

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Files In
21
Building Commands

• mlu tCHI f sample.cha
• mlu .cha
• Wildcards
• File output
• .cha

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Changing Directories

• Set Working to ne32
• combo tMOT s"ising" .cha
• Set Working to samples
• kwal sbunny w2 -w2 0042.cha
• Triple click on output line to go back to source
  file

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GEM

• Set Working to Workshop
• GEM s pau001.cha
• Open output, play audio

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Exercises - Chapter 8

• MLU50
• mlu tCHI z50u f .cha
• MLU5
• maxwd tCHI g1 c5 dl 68.cha mlu gt
  68.ml5.cex
• TTR
• freq tCHI s"-" f .cha

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BatchFile

• maxwd tCHI g1 c5 dl 14.cha mlu gt
  14.ml5.cex
• maxwd tCHI g1 c5 dl 55.cha mlu gt
  55.ml5.cex
• maxwd tCHI g1 c5 dl 66.cha mlu gt
  66.ml5.cex
• maxwd tCHI g1 c5 dl 68.cha mlu gt
  68.ml5.cex
• maxwd tCHI g1 c5 dl 98.cha mlu gt
  98.ml5.cex
• Batch batch.cex
• Or just run by highlighting in Commands (Windows)

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Tables
Child MLU50 MLU5 TTR MLT Ratio
14 0.10 0.12 1.84 -0.90
55 -0.70 -0.65 -0.15 -0.94
66 -0.25 -0.19 -0.68 -1.14
68 3.10 2.56 -0.67 1.60
98 -0.95 -1.11 -0.55 0.31
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The Editor
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Playing a linked file

• Esc-8
• Esc-A
• Cont-Click
• F5

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Linking a File - F5

• Cursor on FAT
• Find file
• F5
• Press space for each utterance
• Save

30
F5 Tricks

• Go back to last good link
• Space quickly through contained overlap
• If a bullet is missing, cut and paste an old one
• For precision, try Sonic Mode

31
Sonic Mode

• Esc-0 to start
• Highlight area
• Shift-click to move edge
• Have cursor on line in file
• S to insert time marks
• Triple click a linked sentence

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Transcribing

• Open new window (Command-N)
• Insert headers
• _at_Begin
• _at_Languages en
• _at_Participants CHI Target_Child, MOT Mother, FAT
  Father, ROS Brother
• _at_Date
• F5 with space at each utterance
• Go back and transcribe each bullet (c-click)
• Adjust time marks using Esc-A

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CHECK

• CHECK is the most important CLAN program
• Internal Esc-L
• External check .cha
• External CHECK provides fuller control

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Options

• Backup
• Wrapping
• Line Numbers
• CHECK

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More Options

• Line numbers F5 bullets SoundAnalyzer

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Coder's Editor

• Open barry.cha
• Esc-0
• Cursor on first line
• Open codeshar.cut
• spa
• Insert NIAACIN

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Coder's Editor Commands

• F1 finish current tier and go to the next
• Esc-c finish coding current tier
• Esc-t restrict coding to a particular speaker
• Esc-Esc go on to the next speaker
• Esc-s rotate subcodes
• Control-g cancel illegal command

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Send to Praat

• Open Praat, Click before link, Send to Praat, Run
  Analysis

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Learning to Digitize
40
IPA- IPAKeys - Mac
41
IPA- KeyMan/SIL-Windows
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Searching, Replacing

• Cont-R, Cont-F
• Space, No, !, control-G

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Fixing Things

• CHSTRING
• INSERT (inserts _at_ID headers)
• FIXIT
• LONGTIER
• FIXBULLETS
• REN
• COMBTIER

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Tour of English MOR Files

• Download a copy
• A-rules
• C-rules
• Sf.cut
• Lexicon

45
Running MOR

• Set MOR directory
• mor xi (dogs)
• mor xl barry.cha
• Open barry.ulx.cex
• Fix problems using KWAL
• mor .cha

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POST

• mor barry.cha 1 or else
• mor barry.cha and then
• ren .mor.cex .cha f
• post .cha 1

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CHAT

• What is an utterance?
• What is a word?
• Tour of the CHAT manual

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Web Browsing of Video
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Some examples

• Forrester
• Rollins
• Yasmin
• Paulo
• Brent, MacWhinney
• Classroom - JLS

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Rollins Coding
51
ProjectPad
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Naked Video

• Terabytes of video
• No transcripts
• Occasional sign posts
• Sparse speech recognition
• Automatic video analysis

53
Collaborative Commentary

• Streaming Media
• TimeLine and Transcript Display
• Stickies for comments
• Options for display of other comments
• Ontology of comments
• Comment database

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Evidential Database

• Theses pointing to evidence through media
• Supporting pointers to PDFs
• Publishable as special issues