Fwd: Re: Proposal to develop a GEMS folder on CHILDES

[Beverly Flanigan]

Here's a "gem" from another listserv (on L1) that's appropriate for ADSers:

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>Date: Mon, 2 Aug 2004 18:26:49 +0100
>To: "Gordon, Peter" <pgordon at exchange.tc.columbia.edu>,
>        info-childes at mail.talkbank.org
>From: Professor Annette Karmiloff-Smith <a.karmiloff-smith at ich.ucl.ac.uk>
>Subject: Re: Proposal to develop a GEMS folder on CHILDES
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>Just got back from being with my six grandchildren, three of whom were
>visiting from the UK  with their cousins who live in Manhatten.
>Here's a gem for you!
>
>5 year old:  "let's play baddles"
>4 year old: "it's not baddles, it's battles. Battles doesn't rhyme with
>paddles""!
>
>hope you're well
>best
>Annette
>
>
>At 12:06 pm -0400 30/7/04, Gordon, Peter wrote:
>>Proposal to develop a GEMS folder on CHILDES
>>
>>Many of us in the child language community are parents, but we don't have
>>the time or organization to collect large language samples from our
>>kids.  However, probably most of us have kept a notebook handy to record
>>interesting things that our kids say.  Sometimes they just never get used
>>because it's not really enough to publish and might end up being only an
>>anecdote in our classes.  It seems to me that this is a rich source of
>>unsystematic but theoretically relevant data.  It's the kind of data that
>>will only show up fortuitously in the more systematic data collections
>>but because we as child language researchers are trained to know when
>>something is remarkable, we can identify such utterances easily and jot
>>them down.  Think of all of the rich examples that have become available,
>>for example, from Melissa Bowerman with these kinds of data.
>>
>>I would suggest that we develop a format for distributing these gems --
>>perhaps the same basic CHAT format in little mini files--  and have a
>>folder in which these can be reside on CHILDES.  Perhaps we could include
>>key words that would help to identify the kind of error that the child
>>made.  This would not substitute for true quantitative data, but it might
>>be useful for answering questions, for example,  about whether or not
>>kids ever make errors of certain types.  Such errors may never show up in
>>the systematic speech samples but nevertheless could be found within the
>>broader language output of the child.  Perhaps we could start off by
>>seeing how many of us have these scrappy notebooks lying around waiting
>>to be mined.  Perhaps if there were a public place to deposit such data,
>>this might encourage people to do this more.
>>
>>
>>Peter Gordon
>>
>>
>>Peter Gordon, Associate Professor
>>525 W 120th St. Box 180
>>Biobehavioral Sciences Department
>>Teachers College, Columbia University
>>New York, NY 10027
>>
>>(212)  678-8162
>>
>>
>>
>>