From dmolfese at som.siu.edu Mon May 3 14:33:02 1999 From: dmolfese at som.siu.edu (Dennis L. Molfese) Date: Mon, 3 May 1999 09:33:02 -0500 Subject: postdoc position in Language and Brain Message-ID: Postdoctoral position in Language and Brain. I can support a postdoctoral position for two years beginning this summer on July 1. I am looking for someone with strong graduate training in early language development. The training I will provide will focus on the electrophysiological correlates of early language development (speech perception, word and sentence development) using several 128 electrode array Geo-net systems with children ranging in age from neonates to preschoolers. One system will be set up in a local hospital to allow us to study longitudinally identical and fraternal twins, while another will be based in my University of Louisville lab to test older infants and children. No prior electrophysiological experience or familiarity with that literature is necessary (although always welcome). Training will involve emersion in that literature, grant and manuscript writing, in-depth training in hardware and theory, and relevant statistical data treatments, as well as in the neuropsychology of language. At the end of this postdoc training period, it is my expectation that the student will be able to set up and operate a state of the art language centered neuroelectrophysiology lab. If you are interested or know of someone who might be interested, please ask them to contact me at their earliest convenience. Applicants should send to me their letter of interest in which they outline their relevant background, a vita, and two letters of recommendation. Thanks, Dennis Molfese Dennis L. Molfese, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Physiology, Pediatrics, Psychiatry, and Behavioral & Social Sciences Chair, Behavioral & Social Sciences School of Medicine Southern Illinois University Carbondale, IL 62901-6502 618/453-3521 dmolfese at som.siu.edu Beginning July 1, 1999: Dennis L. Molfese, Ph.D. Chair and Professor Distinguished University Scholar Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences University of Louisville 317 Life Sciences Building Belknap Campus Louisville, KY 40292-0001 502/852-6775 or 502/852-8274 From rosangela.gabriel at psy.ox.ac.uk Tue May 4 11:28:14 1999 From: rosangela.gabriel at psy.ox.ac.uk (Rosangele Gabriel ( Kim Plunkett RSA)) Date: Tue, 4 May 1999 11:28:14 GMT Subject: POSTS Message-ID: Dear Sir/Madam, I'm working with Dr Kim Plunkett in the Department of Experimental Psychology - Oxford University - and I would like to know if the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory had been used to collect data from Brazilian Portuguese children's vocabulary. If yes, how can I have access to the data? Yours sincerely, Rosangela Gabriel _________________ Rosangela Gabriel Department of Experimental Psychology South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3UD - UK Phone +44 01865 271400 (work) +44 01865 453380 (home) Rosangela.Gabriel at psy.ox.ac.uk _________________ Rosangela Gabriel Department of Experimental Psychology South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3UD - UK Phone +44 01865 271400 (work) +44 01865 453380 (home) Rosangela.Gabriel at psy.ox.ac.uk From santelmannl at pdx.edu Mon May 3 16:45:44 1999 From: santelmannl at pdx.edu (Lynn Santelmann) Date: Mon, 3 May 1999 09:45:44 -0700 Subject: Human Subjects Review and Maintaince of Audio/Video Tapes Message-ID: I have recently applied for human subjects review at Portland State University and was surprised to receive a query from the committee as to "how long will the videos and records be stored and how and when will they be destroyed?" I had carefully explained in my application that any publications of results or transcripts would use only code names, so as to protect the privacy of the participants, and that the audio and video tapes were to be kept in locked cabinets in my office/lab. To be honest, I hadn't considered destroying the original tapes, and I don't want to be required to do so. I have often found it necessary to go back to the original tapes to clarify issues that come up later, or to answer questions that arise later (such as might stem from peer review). This certainly touches on the issues of privacy and confidentiality that were discussed on this list recently, but at the same time, I find this request to be excessive, especially since I am not proposing to make the recordings public, except through transcripts. My questions for the community are: 1. Has anyone else run up against this kind of request to destroy the original tapes? 2. Any suggestions on how to respond to this committee? Thanks for the help, Sincerely, Lynn Santelmann ****************************************************** Lynn Santelmann, Assistant Professor Department of Applied Linguistics Portland State University 467 Neuberger Hall 724 SW Harrison Ave. Portland, OR 97201 Phone: (503) 725-4140 Fax: (503) 725-4139 e-mail: santelmannl at pdx.edu ****************************************************** From jeff at elda.fr Tue May 4 18:29:12 1999 From: jeff at elda.fr (Jeff ALLEN) Date: Tue, 4 May 1999 20:29:12 +0200 Subject: Human Subjects Review and Maintaince of Audio/Video Tapes Message-ID: At 09:45 03/05/99 -0700, Lynn Santelmann wrote: >I have recently applied for human subjects review at Portland State >University Yes, Applied Ling dept, up one level and down the hall from Modern Languages in Neuberger Hall. I did my BA in French and MA in TESOL/App Ling there. I've heard a few stories about the Human Subjects review committee being quite difficult at PSU. You are not the first one from there to complain. I finished my graduate work there nearly 10 years ago and remember comments from grad student union meetings, etc. about dealing with Human Subjects Review. Granted, it is a safety factor for the subjects themselves, but when it starts squelching valid research, that is not good. > and was surprised to receive a query from the committee as to >"how long will the videos and records be stored and how and when will they >be destroyed?" > >I had carefully explained in my application that any publications of >results or transcripts would use only code names, so as to protect the >privacy of the participants, and that the audio and video tapes were to be >kept in locked cabinets in my office/lab. Watch out with such conditions. In my data collection efforts of very precious and hard-to-come-by data (recorded data of 150 Haitian Creole speakers and of 300 Korean speakers for speech recognition systems), I have always kept the digitally recorded data on one hard disk, with daily back-ups on 8mm tape (back-ups done overnight). I take one 8mm tape home each day, alternating the tapes each day so that the one in my briefcase is yesterday's back-up material. 8mm tapes are good for sound files since you can store 2- 5 Gb of data on them, maybe more now. Then you burn CDroms every so often as additional back ups. Granted, you are dealing with video tapes, which are also subject to breaking, stretching, cracking, etc. Multiples copies are necessary for avoiding a major disaster to your data if Neuberger Hall unfortunately goes up in smoke. >To be honest, I hadn't considered >destroying the original tapes, Either would I. I still have all of the audio taped conversations of the interviews for my doctoral work. it is the only proof for verifying data. Once the tapes/data are gone, there is no way that you or anyone else can check your work, from a scientific standpoint. >and I don't want to be required to do so. I >have often found it necessary to go back to the original tapes to clarify >issues that come up later, or to answer questions that arise later (such as >might stem from peer review). Exactly. >This certainly touches on the issues of privacy and confidentiality that >were discussed on this list recently, An interesting thread on "anonymity" in corpora studies and the anonymisation of data appeared on the Corpora List recently. I have the whole thread of messages if you are interested. I also know different folks working in corpus linguistics who specifically deal with this issue all the time for the use of medical records and police records. I can refer you to them for how they have dealt with this in project proposals for universities and govt-funded research grants. >but at the same time, I find this >request to be excessive, especially since I am not proposing to make the >recordings public, except through transcripts. > >My questions for the community are: >1. Has anyone else run up against this kind of request to destroy the >original tapes? >2. Any suggestions on how to respond to this committee? Yes, The data is for research purposes only. There is no intent for public or research dissemination (although you might want to be careful not getting yourself to stuck with this). State it so that you will not disseminate/distribute the data without prior consent of the subjects, and that non-disclosure statements would be signed by any parties that receive the data. Also carefully state that in the published results, you will follow existing criteria for anonymisation. The thread of messages on this topic from Corpora will point you to more experts in this field. State that if there is any need for external intervention of other experts with regard to this data, you will require them to sign a non-disclosure statement. It would help to have an example of it for the HSR committee to look over as an accompanying annex to your reply. Lastly, destroying the original data, including copies, is removing all potential data for any scientific benchmarking, verification, and validation issues. Any comments from other people on the list? Jeff ================================================= Jeff ALLEN - Directeur Technique European Language Resources Association (ELRA) & European Language resources Distribution Agency (ELDA) (Agence Européenne de Distribution des Ressources Linguistiques) 55, rue Brillat-Savarin 75013 Paris FRANCE Tel: (+33) 1.43.13.33.33 - Fax: (+33) 1.43.13.33.30 mailto:jeff at elda.fr http://www.icp.grenet.fr/ELRA/home.html From asheldon at maroon.tc.umn.edu Tue May 4 20:50:24 1999 From: asheldon at maroon.tc.umn.edu (Amy L Sheldon) Date: Tue, 4 May 1999 15:50:24 -0500 Subject: Human Subjects Review and Maintaince of Audio/Video Tapes Message-ID: I think this is a standard query, but I've not run into any requirement that primary records be disposed of by a certain date. It is reasonable to say - materials to be held until no longer deemed necessary for research, or something like this. On Mon, 3 May 1999, Lynn Santelmann wrote: > I have recently applied for human subjects review at Portland State > University and was surprised to receive a query from the committee as to > "how long will the videos and records be stored and how and when will they > be destroyed?" > > kept in locked cabinets in my office/lab. To be honest, I hadn't considered > destroying the original tapes, and I don't want to be required to do so. I > request to be excessive, especially since I am not proposing to make the are they requesting that you dispose of the recordings? I don't read the quote above as saying that necessarily. Amy Sheldon From santell at nh1.nh.pdx.edu Tue May 4 23:58:06 1999 From: santell at nh1.nh.pdx.edu (Lynn Santelmann) Date: Tue, 4 May 1999 15:58:06 PST Subject: Sum: Subject: Re: Human Subjects and Maintaince of Audi Message-ID: Thank you to all who replied so quickly to my query concerning my human subjects committee's question about "destroying" records, especially thanks to those who have recently served on human subjects review committees and so could explain where this request comes from. It seems that this question about destroying data comes from one of the U.S. federal agency questionaires (NIH?). I probably over-reacted to the question -- it wasn't given as a requirement that data be destroyed, simply as a suggestion or even question about whether it would be. All of the respondents were of the opinion that it is not necessary to agree to destroy the data. A fair number of replies pointed out the value of maintaining data archivally so that it can be used for scientific verfication. In terms how to respond, a number of people suggested that I simply say that I plan to keep these data for archival purposes (or variations on this theme, e.g., after coding and ALL analysis or "until the materials are no longer deemed necessary for research") Most people who had served on human subjects committees said that if the information about archiving and the potential use of tapes for future studies is included in the informed consent, then there should be no issue with keeping the data indefinitely. These are definitely good ideas and something that I had omitted in my original consent form. I have spoken with my administrators about this, and it appears that simply defending the need to archive data and making it explicit in the consent form will suffice. One final note: Jeff Allen pointed out to me that it pays to be cautious when detailing HOW data will be securely stored. If you state that it is going to be stored in a locked cabinet in your office, then technically, this prevents you from making back-ups and storing them at home in case of fire. Saying that the tapes will be stored in "a secure location" is probably better. Thanks to: Jeff Allen Terry Au Angeline Lillard Brian MacWhinney Liz Bates Margot Kinberg Lynne Hewitt Amy L Sheldon Margaret Friend John Limber C. Melanie Schuele (apologies to anyone I missed) Best, Lynn Santelmann ________________________________________________________ Lynn Santelmann, Assistant Professor Department of Applied Linguistics Portland State University P.O. Box 751 Portland, OR 92707-0751 Phone: (503) 725-4140 Fax: (503) 725-4139 E-mail: santelmannl at pdx.edu ________________________________________________________ From ann.dowker at psy.ox.ac.uk Wed May 5 19:46:16 1999 From: ann.dowker at psy.ox.ac.uk (Ann Dowker) Date: Wed, 5 May 1999 20:46:16 +0100 Subject: sign language development database? Message-ID: I read somewhere (I think in one of Ursula Bellugi's papers) that there is a database of children's early ASL use. Is this the case? If so, where is it and how does one gain access to it? Yours, Ann Dowker From RCDUBE at IDIRECT.COM Thu May 6 18:47:41 1999 From: RCDUBE at IDIRECT.COM (Rita Vis Dubé) Date: Thu, 6 May 1999 14:47:41 -0400 Subject: ASL Transcription Message-ID: I am interested in finding out if there are any guidelines/criteria for reliability for transcription for American Sign Language (ASL). I have used the transcription coding system described by Baker & Cokely (American Sign Language: A Teacher's Resource Text on Grammar and Culture, 1980). I would like to find out if anyone has come across or has developed a set of guidelines for interrater reliability. Sincerely, Rita Vis Dube Doctoral Candidate Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine University of Alberta Edmonton, AB From m.barrett at surrey.ac.uk Fri May 7 13:00:30 1999 From: m.barrett at surrey.ac.uk (Martyn Barrett) Date: Fri, 7 May 1999 13:00:30 GMT Subject: book announcement Message-ID: NEW BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT **************************** The following book, which may be of particular interest to info-childes readers, has just been published: M. Barrett (ed.) (1999), The Development of Language. Hove, UK: Psychology Press. ISBN 0-86377-846-1. 416 pp. Hardback. 39.95 Pounds Sterling. The contents of the book are as follows: CHAPTER 1: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NATURE OF LANGUAGE AND TO THE CENTRAL THEMES AND ISSUES IN THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT, by Martyn Barrett The nature of language The task facing the language-learning child The topics covered by the chapters in this book Recurrent themes and issues in the study of children's language development References CHAPTER 2: PRELINGUISTIC COMMUNICATION, by Vasudevi Reddy How do we look for the prelinguistic? Intentionality in communication Reasons for the emergence of communication Continuities in communicative development Embodiment in communication Landmarks in the changing nature of prelinguistic communication Understanding prelinguistic communication: continuity and embodiment References CHAPTER 3: EARLY SPEECH PERCEPTION AND WORD LEARNING, by Kim Plunkett and Graham Schafer Introduction Early speech perception Word detection Word learning Summary References CHAPTER 4: PHONOLOGICAL ACQUISITION, by David Ingram Introduction A phonological case study: the data Theoretical issues Phonological analysis Summary References CHAPTER 5: EARLY LEXICAL DEVELOPMENT, by Esther Dromi Introduction The size of the one-word lexicon and the rate of accumulating new words The distribution of early words in various word-classes The content of early words Semantic processes in the acquisition of early word meanings The role of context and experience in the acquisition of word meanings Theoretical models on word meaning acquisition Epilogue References CHAPTER 6: THE WORLD OF WORDS: THOUGHTS ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF A LEXICON, by Stan A. Kuczaj II The word as unit What's in a word? The representation of meaning Reference Denotation Are object words basic? The denotation of early object words The problem of too many possibilities Is children's acquisition of word meaning constrained? Constraints for word meaning acquisition? What counts as a constraint? Are constraints necessary for word meaning acquisition? The acquisition of paradigmatic relations Syntagmatic relations The interaction of language and cognitive development Conclusions References CHAPTER 7: EARLY SYNTACTIC DEVELOPMENT: A CONSTRUCTION GRAMMAR APPROACH, by Michael Tomasello and Patricia J. Brooks Major steps in early syntactic development Processes of development Conclusion References CHAPTER 8: SOME ASPECTS OF INNATENESS AND COMPLEXITY IN GRAMMATICAL ACQUISITION, by Michael Maratsos Introduction: some basic ideas about complexity, innateness, and heterogeneity Thematic relation mapping in English and other languages: massive complexity in some systems Formal categories: some developmental issues Chomskyan acquisitions: formal and abstruse properties of grammar Some general conclusions about complex grammatical acquisition References CHAPTER 9: THE DEVELOPMENT OF CONVERSATIONAL AND DISCOURSE SKILLS, by Barbara A. Pan and Catherine E. Snow Development of conversational skills Development of discourse skills Conclusion References CHAPTER 10: BILINGUAL LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT, by Suzanne Romaine Introduction Types of childhood bilingualism Theoretical issues in childhood bilingualism Input and social context as factors affecting rate and order of acquisition Is there cognitive advantage to bilingualism? References CHAPTER 11: SIGN LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT, by John D. Bonvillian Introduction Early sign language acquisition: similarities and differences with spoken language development Hand preference in early signing The development of gestural communication in the absence of a language model The emergence of a new sign language Is there a critical period for sign language acquisition? Sign communication training for mute, low-functioning children Concluding remarks References CHAPTER 12: LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT IN ATYPICAL CHILDREN, by Helen Tager-Flusberg Introduction Down Syndrome Williams Syndrome Autism Other atypical populations Conclusions References CHAPTER 13: SPECIFIC LANGUAGE IMPAIRMENT, by Paul Fletcher Introduction Subject description The LAD deficit hypothesis SLI in other languages How specific is specific language impairment? Residual issues Conclusion References CHAPTER 14: TOWARDS A BIOLOGICAL SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT, by John Locke Introduction Explaining language development Ontogenetic phases A proposed goal-directed model Concluding remarks References ****************************** Professor Martyn Barrett Department of Psychology University of Surrey Guildford Surrey GU2 5XH UK Tel: (01483) 876862 Fax: (01483) 259553 Email: m.barrett at surrey.ac.uk ****************************** From m.barrett at surrey.ac.uk Fri May 7 17:40:17 1999 From: m.barrett at surrey.ac.uk (Martyn Barrett) Date: Fri, 7 May 1999 17:40:17 GMT Subject: The Development of Language Message-ID: I've received a number of email enquiries asking how people can order a copy of The Development of Language. Probably the simplest method would be by email to the following address: book.orders at tandf.co.uk Hope this helps! Martyn Barrett ****************************** Professor Martyn Barrett Department of Psychology University of Surrey Guildford Surrey GU2 5XH UK Tel: (01483) 876862 Fax: (01483) 259553 Email: m.barrett at surrey.ac.uk ****************************** From edwards.212 at osu.edu Sat May 8 17:06:11 1999 From: edwards.212 at osu.edu (Jan Edwards) Date: Sat, 8 May 1999 12:06:11 -0500 Subject: noise-free audio recordings Message-ID: I'm wondering if anyone can help with a problem that we are having. We are recording young children (3 to 5 year olds) onto audiotape in order to do acoustic analyses (spectral moments analysis and formant tracking). We need recordings with a very good signal-to-noise ratio (preferably at least 40 dB) for our purposes. Some built-in limitations: 1. We are recording children at several different sites in a "quiet" classroom -- we can't use a soundproof booth since the kids are not coming to us. Therefore, we always have some ambient noise. 2. We need to use a laptop computer since we are going to several different sites. The sound chips in the laptops are not of the highest quality. 3. Because we are recording such young children, we need to use a head-mounted microphone to maintain a fairly standard mouth-to-microphone distance. This limits our choice of microphone options. We have tried two different procedures: 1. Recording directly onto the computer. This method works great in our laboratory with a high-quality sound board. It doesn't work with the laptop -- too much noise inherent in the poor-quality sound chips that are built into the laptop. 2. Recording with a Shure head-mounted microphone, a preamp (made by our technician), and a SONY portable digital audio tape recorder. These recordings also have been noisy. Has anyone else had better luck making recordings under similar conditions? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Jan Edwards From macw at cmu.edu Sun May 9 16:33:20 1999 From: macw at cmu.edu (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Sun, 9 May 1999 12:33:20 -0400 Subject: noise-free audio recordings Message-ID: Jan, My approach in these circumstances would be to record the children using either a DAT recorder, a Sony Professional Walkman, or the Marantz equivalent and do the digitization later using a full lab set-up. However, you say that you have done something like this and that the recording are noisy. If so, you have to consider what might be causing the noise. One source is use of the wrong mike set-up. A head-mounted mike could be causing rubbing and vibration. A better bet might be an omnidirectional mike on a stand placed on a pillow in a place near the children, but not subject to bumping. Try recording yourselves rather than children in these same circumstances. If you still have noise, maybe it is ambient noise or a problem with your taperecorder. If you want the absolute best quality, maybe you need to shift to DAT. --Brian MacWhinney From macw at cmu.edu Tue May 11 20:14:55 1999 From: macw at cmu.edu (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Tue, 11 May 1999 16:14:55 -0400 Subject: CHILDES/BIB Message-ID: Dear Info-CHILDES, I'm afraid the machine that was serving the CHILDES/BIB had a hardware failure. Hopefully the bibliography will be accessible again at a new address by about Friday. --Brian MacWhinney From aad784 at agora.ulaval.ca Tue May 11 21:07:58 1999 From: aad784 at agora.ulaval.ca (Antonella Conte) Date: Tue, 11 May 1999 17:07:58 -0400 Subject: mlu info Message-ID: Hi there everyone, Way back on March 31st of this year, it was mentioned that there was a CHILDES/BIB where one could find information on "mean length of utterance". I have tried to access this site (http://alaska.psy.cmu.edu) on the net, but to no avail. Is it possible that the server is always tied up? Another question if I may: The unit of measurement for mlu is "morpheme/utterance". What is the exact definition of "morpheme" ? Is an "utterance" equal to a new tier for a particular speaker? Antonella Conte From aad784 at agora.ulaval.ca Tue May 11 21:15:54 1999 From: aad784 at agora.ulaval.ca (Antonella Conte) Date: Tue, 11 May 1999 17:15:54 -0400 Subject: size of data Message-ID: Dear all, I have quite a big corpus to analyse and have chosen to do so using CHILDES. However, I was wondering if the system is big enough to handle about 1500 pages of transcribed and typed data. Has anyone done so before? If so, with how much data (if you don't mind me asking)? If not, is there a maximum number of transcribed pages? Experimenting with the system, I have been able to analyse my sittings on an individual basis but would like to amalgamate them (i.e. sitting one + sitting two, sitting 1+2+3, sitting 1+2+3+4,...). In doing so, I know that my stats will change. What I am afraid of though, is that the system will crash on me. I'm hoping that someone could provide me with some advice to avoid this perdicament. Thanks for your reply, Antonella Conte From macw at cmu.edu Tue May 11 21:47:32 1999 From: macw at cmu.edu (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Tue, 11 May 1999 17:47:32 -0400 Subject: big corpora Message-ID: Dear Antonella, I use CHILDES frequently to run what we call "mega-freqs" on far more than 1500 pages of data. I don't think you will have trouble with running on a corpus of that size. I am assuming that you will break your transcript up into files corresponding to individual sessions, right? To analyze sittings together, as you wish, you just use wildcards, as in freq *.cha One way of testing all this would be to download a huge corpus, such as the Brown or Hall corpora and run your commands there to see if having lots of data can somehow "break" the programs. I doubt that it will. If you have other technical questions about the detailed running of CHAT commands or the editor, let's move the discussion over to the other mailing list at info-chibolts at childes.psy.cmu.edu. Good luck. --Brian MacWhinney From ditza at correo.uniovi.es Wed May 12 18:44:16 1999 From: ditza at correo.uniovi.es (Eliseo Diez-Itza) Date: Wed, 12 May 1999 13:44:16 -0500 Subject: big corpora Message-ID: -- [ From: Eliseo Diez-Itza * EMC.Ver #2.5.02 ] -- If you run >freq *.cha , you get as output: freq 1.cha + freq 2.cha, Is it possible to get as output: freq (1.cha + 2.cha) without pasting previously the transcripts? Eliseo Diez-Itza Universidad de Oviedo From m.deuchar at bangor.ac.uk Wed May 12 15:46:36 1999 From: m.deuchar at bangor.ac.uk (Margaret Deuchar) Date: Wed, 12 May 1999 16:46:36 +0100 Subject: Posts in Linguistics at University of Wales, Bangor Message-ID: Applications are invited for posts as described below. The research interests of applicants can be in any area of linguistics including child language and psycholinguistics. SCHOOL OF ENGLISH AND LINGUISTICS, UNIVERSITY OF WALES, BANGOR Department of Linguistics Applications are invited for two lectureships in Linguistics, tenable from 1st September 1999 or as soon as possible thereafter. The people appointed will be expected to play a key role in the development of our new BA in English Language. Applicants should have a PhD and a strong record in teaching and research relative to their age and experience. The appointments will be on the Lecturer Scale A: £16655-21815 Application forms and further particulars can be obtained from Personnel Services, University of Wales, Bangor, Gwynedd, LL57 2DG, U.K. Tel. (01248) 382926. Email: pos020 at bangor.ac.uk Informal enquiries can be made by contacting Professor Jenny Thomas, Linguistics Department, University of Wales, Bangor, Gwynedd, LL57 2DG. Tel. (44) (01248) 382270. Email: jenny.thomas at bangor.ac.uk Please quote reference number 99/56 when applying. Closing date for applications: 14 June 1999 SCHOOL OF ENGLISH AND LINGUISTICS Department of Linguistics FURTHER PARTICULARS Applications are invited for two lectureships in Linguistics, tenable from 1st September 1999 or as soon as possible thereafter. One post may be for a three-year fixed term in the first instance. The people appointed will be expected to play a key role in the development of our new BA in English Language. Applications are welcome from well qualified individuals with research interests within any area of Linguistics, but the people appointed will be required to offer courses in two or more of the following areas: English grammar, variation in English, the history of English, language and the media, stylistics, corpus linguistics, language in education, English language teaching, psycholinguistics. Applicants should have completed their PhD (or equivalent) and have a strong record of research and publication relative to their age and experience. They should also have a record of effective teaching at University level (the person appointed may be required to follow UWB's highly regarded Certificate in Teaching in Higher Education, if appropriate). The appointments will be on the Lecturer Scale A: £16655-21815 Informal enquiries can be made by contacting Professor Jenny Thomas, Linguistics Department, University of Wales, Bangor, Gwynedd, LL57 2DG. Tel. (01248) 382270. Email: Jenny.Thomas at Bangor.ac.uk Shortlisted candidates will be invited to Bangor for interview 20th and 21st July 1999 and will be asked to give a 20-minute presentation on a topic of their choice (this should relate to proposed or current research). Candidates will also be asked to discuss the contributions they could make to the teaching in the Department. Please send a completed Application Form, CV and Teaching Profile to: Personnel Services, University of Wales, Bangor, Gwynedd, LL57 2DG. Tel. (01248) 382926. Email: pos020 at bangor.ac.uk. Please include the names and addresses of 3 referees including , if possible, email addresses, fax and telephone numbers. Please note that candidates who are shortlisted will be asked to submit copies of any publications they have listed as `forthcoming' or `in press'. Please quote reference number 99/56 when applying. The closing date for applications is 14 June 1999. Visit our Web Pages: http://www/linguistics.bangor.ac.uk/ `Person Profile' The person appointed will have: a PhD (or equivalent) in linguistics or a related field; a strong record of research and publications relative to age and experience; experience and competence in university teaching, and the ability to relate well to students new to the field; a commitment to the pastoral care of students; competence in administration; willingness to play a full part in the life of the Department. SCHOOL OF ENGLISH AND LINGUISTICS Department of Linguistics About the Department The Linguistics department is one of the oldest in the UK, and the only one in Wales. It was established in 1960 and became part of the School of English and Linguistics in 1989. The Professor of English, Professor Tom Corns, is currently Head of the School. The department has an established staff of seven, including two Professors and three Senior Lecturers. There is one Graduate Assistant and several part time Tutorial Assistants. In addition, Professor David Crystal holds the position of Honorary Professorial Fellow, and Professor Alan Thomas the position of Research Professor. The department currently offers BAs in Linguistics and Linguistics with English Language and an MA in Linguistics. The latter is part of a recently introduced Ph.D. Programme. From 2000 we shall be introducing two new degree schemes, English Language and English Language and Literature (the latter will be taught jointly with the Literature Department). The department has some outstanding Ph.D. students who regularly present papers at national and international meetings. The department offers a broad range of undergraduate courses, which seek to accommodate the interests of a diverse body of students, and offers Ph.D. supervision in most areas of linguistics. The department is an important centre for linguistic research, particularly in the areas of syntax, language acquisition and pragmatics. In the last UFC Research Assessment Exercise, it received a rating of 3A. It is important to us to improve on this rating, and to this end we aim to keep teaching commitments below 90 hours per year for all staff who are research active. Members of the department have organized some seven international conferences since 1992, which have brought numerous distinguished linguists to Bangor, and a weekly research seminar has welcomed speakers from many UK and European universities as well as the United States. Members of the department are also involved in interdisciplinary research, especially with members of the Psychology department, with whom a Bangor Centre for Psycholinguistics has recently been established. From clal-mailbox at cornell.edu Thu May 13 21:59:09 1999 From: clal-mailbox at cornell.edu (Cornell Language Acquisition Laboratory) Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 17:59:09 -0400 Subject: Spanish Flip Verbs Message-ID: Does anyone know of any references of the L1 acquisition of "Flip" verbs (such as "gustar") in Spanish or any other language that has similar verb forms? Many thanks, Jennifer Austin & Maria Blume, Cornell University. ==================================== | Cornell Language Acquisition Lab | | NG29, Martha van Rensselaer Hall | | Cornell University | | Ithaca, NY | | 14853 | | (607) 255-8090 | | clal at cornell.edu | ==================================== From labraham at unm.edu Fri May 14 14:47:56 1999 From: labraham at unm.edu (Lee Abraham) Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 08:47:56 -0600 Subject: No subject Message-ID: Set nomail From macw at cmu.edu Fri May 14 15:04:49 1999 From: macw at cmu.edu (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 11:04:49 -0400 Subject: big corpora Message-ID: Dear Eliseo, I am guessing that you want: freq +u *.cha This treats all of your many files as if they were one huge file and produces a single file of FREQ output. --Brian P.S. Please feel free to post questions about the use of CLAN programs to info-chibolts at childes.psy.cmu.edu --On Wed, May 12, 1999 1:44 PM -0500 Eliseo Diez-Itza wrote: > -- [ From: Eliseo Diez-Itza * EMC.Ver #2.5.02 ] -- > > If you run >freq *.cha , you get as output: freq 1.cha + freq > 2.cha, Is it possible to get as output: freq (1.cha + 2.cha) without > pasting previously the transcripts? > > Eliseo Diez-Itza > Universidad de Oviedo > From roma at telebot.com Mon May 17 01:41:25 1999 From: roma at telebot.com (Roma Horbatsch) Date: Sun, 16 May 1999 21:41:25 -0400 Subject: IASCL Congress Message-ID: To IASCL Congress Participants travelling from BILBAO to San Sebastian !!! I will be in Bilbao on Sunday July 11th. If you would like to share a Taxi or travel by bus to San Sebastian please let me know. Roma Chumak-Horbatsch From cec at cwcom.net Mon May 17 12:01:46 1999 From: cec at cwcom.net (Cecile De Cat) Date: Mon, 17 May 1999 13:01:46 +0100 Subject: dislocations and other peripheral elements in child language Message-ID: Dear InfoChildes I am writing to ask if anyone knows of studies of dislocations and other peripheral elements in child language. By this, I mean any type of selected or unselected argument that appears outside of the "core of the sentence", typically with a dislocation intonation. The two examples below are from adult French. The peripheral elements are capitalised (capitals not being used here to indicate focus). (1) elle est folle, CETTE FILLE she is mad, this girl (2) MOI, LES HISTOIRES, j'aime bien me the stories I like well A while back, there was a message from Lawrence Cheung on the Linguist List, inquiring about languages with right-dislocations. This is, in part, what I am interested in, but in the field of child language, and in both directions (left and right). Thanks a lot for your help Cecile De Cat University of York From slobin at cogsci.Berkeley.EDU Mon May 17 17:25:40 1999 From: slobin at cogsci.Berkeley.EDU (Dan I. SLOBIN) Date: Mon, 17 May 1999 10:25:40 -0700 Subject: dislocations and other peripheral elements in child language Message-ID: Right dislocations are common in Turkish, which is an SOV language. Continuing information (given, topic, etc.) appears post-verbally; the immediate pre-verbal slot is for focus. These word-order patterns are used in pragmatically appropriate fashion from the beginning of multiword utterances in Turkish. There are a number of papers on this issue in Turkish child language, as well as sections of several doctoral dissertations. -Dan Slobin Psych, Univ of Calif, Berkeley On Mon, 17 May 1999, Cecile De Cat wrote: > Dear InfoChildes > > I am writing to ask if anyone knows of studies of dislocations and other peripheral elements in child language. By this, I mean any type of selected or unselected argument that appears outside of the "core of the sentence", typically with a dislocation intonation. The two examples below are from adult French. The peripheral elements are capitalised (capitals not being used here to indicate focus). > > (1) elle est folle, CETTE FILLE > she is mad, this girl > (2) MOI, LES HISTOIRES, j'aime bien > me the stories I like well > > A while back, there was a message from Lawrence Cheung on the Linguist List, inquiring about languages with right-dislocations. This is, in part, what I am interested in, but in the field of child language, and in both directions (left and right). > > Thanks a lot for your help > > > Cecile De Cat > University of York > > From shanley at bu.edu Mon May 17 19:09:59 1999 From: shanley at bu.edu (Shanley E. M. Allen) Date: Mon, 17 May 1999 15:09:59 -0400 Subject: language in Teletubbies Message-ID: In my "Intro to Language Acquisition" class, I'm having the students do a debate on the linguistic merits of the Teletubbies program, a TV program designed for children aged 1-5 which airs on PBS in the USA, on BBC in the UK, and in several other countries around the world. The students must take one of three positions: (1) the language in Teletubbies is helpful in fostering language development in child viewers, (2) the language in Teletubbies is detrimental for the language development of child viewers, and (3) the language in Teletubbies has no positive or negative effect on the language development of child viewers. To prepare for the debate, I've given the students copies of BBC and PBS press releases, interviews with the show's designers, interviews with the PBS and BBC people responsible for children's programming (all of the preceding from the BBC and PBS web sites), newspaper articles about the show, and caregivers' comments about the show from a parenting web site. However, I haven't been able to find any academic research about Teletubbies using the usual sources (CHILDES-BIB, PsycLit, ERIC, LLBA, MLA Bibliography, etc.). Extensive web searches turn up only marketing sites, chat room discussions, and articles on the sexual orientation of Tinky Winky (apart from the BBC and PBS cites noted above). Also, although the press releases and interviews with the show's designers state that the show is based on extensive language acquisition research, the source of this research is not cited anywhere, so it's not clear to me what research they used (other than of course their own piloting of the show with children in various focus groups). Thus, I would be very grateful if anyone could send me references to research concerning the language used in the Teletubbies program, or help point me in the right direction to find them myself. I would be happy to post a summary of results if there is sufficient interest. Sincerely, Shanley Allen. ***************************************************** Shanley E. M. Allen, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Boston University Graduate Program in Applied Linguistics Developmental Studies Department, School of Education 605 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA, 02215, U.S.A. phone: +1-617-358-0354 fax: +1-617-353-3924 e-mail: shanley at bu.edu ***************************************************** From wsnyder at uconnvm.uconn.edu Tue May 18 00:34:21 1999 From: wsnyder at uconnvm.uconn.edu (William B. Snyder) Date: Mon, 17 May 1999 20:34:21 -0400 Subject: dislocations and other peripheral elements in child language Message-ID: I believe Marc-Ariel Friedemann, as a graduate student at the University of Geneva, wrote a paper a few years back arguing that right-dislocation structures were unusually frequent in the child French of Philippe (Suppes/Smith/Leveille, CHILDES), as compared to adult usage. Unfortunately I don't know the reference off hand - possibly in GenGenP (the linguistics working paper series at Geneva). - William Prof. William B. Snyder Department of Linguistics University of Connecticut On Mon, 17 May 1999, Cecile De Cat wrote: > Dear InfoChildes > > I am writing to ask if anyone knows of studies of dislocations and other peripheral elements in child language. By this, I mean any type of selected or unselected argument that appears outside of the "core of the sentence", typically with a dislocation intonation. The two examples below are from adult French. The peripheral elements are capitalised (capitals not being used here to indicate focus). > > (1) elle est folle, CETTE FILLE > she is mad, this girl > (2) MOI, LES HISTOIRES, j'aime bien > me the stories I like well > > A while back, there was a message from Lawrence Cheung on the Linguist List, inquiring about languages with right-dislocations. This is, in part, what I am interested in, but in the field of child language, and in both directions (left and right). > > Thanks a lot for your help > > > Cecile De Cat > University of York > > > From geertje.leemans at let.uva.nl Tue May 18 09:36:20 1999 From: geertje.leemans at let.uva.nl (Geertje Leemans) Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 11:36:20 +0200 Subject: change in email adress Message-ID: Please note a change in my email adress Old: geertje.leemans at let.uva.nl New: geertje.leemans at hum.uva.nl Geertje Leemans Carel Fabritiuslaan 44 NL-1181 TE Amstelveen The Netherlands tel: +31 20 6476367 Email: geertje.leemans at hum.uva.nl (let op!!! nieuw emailadres!!!) From lmb32 at columbia.edu Tue May 18 12:10:29 1999 From: lmb32 at columbia.edu (Lois Bloom) Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 08:10:29 -0400 Subject: language in Teletubbies Message-ID: Monday, May 17, 1999 As far as I know, there are no studies on the value of TeleTubbies for fostering language acquisition. But, for what it's worth, I was asked by ABC News to review one of the earliest tapes to come across and comment on the controversy in Britain at the time over the relative benefit, or not, of TeleTubbies for early language acquisition. I was 'set up' to expect the worst: the controversy as explained to me was that both the TeleTubbies and the real children in the tele-vignettes used 'baby talk'. The rationale given by the producers was that baby talk would be more compatible to very young ears. The criticism was that it was a 'dumbing down' that would provide distorted speech models. Two tapes were hand delivered from NY to CT so that I could watch them one Saturday afternoon. My husband wandered in and promptly fell asleep. I loved them! First, this show (or at least the tapes I watched) is not going to 'teach' children language. But the tapes I saw did incorporate several aspects of normal language acquisition that are potentially valuable for holding very young children's attention (at least) and creating some awareness of what language does (not unimportant). Here are the features that I saw as noteworthy. One is *repetition* (the reason my husband feel asleep) --the short segments are shown, and then shown again, and sometimes yet again, which means that the young 1- or 2- year-old who didn't catch it the first time gets another shot at it. Second, there are certain concepts built into the vignettes that echo research in normal language acquisition by myself and others: in particular, the use of relational words like "more," "again" and "uhoh" and "gone" - -fairly basic concept-word connections for 1-year-olds. (If students want cites to the relevant research, I can provide them). So somebody had to have done some reading; they weren't showcasing "1 ball," "2 balls," "red ball," "blue ball". And the pace is slow, and easy, and colorful, and catchy, and incorporates expectation as well as surprise (BUT I have to admit, I haven't watched any segments since). Will the use of so-called 'baby talk' be hurtful? Maybe there will be research out there some day to say that it is, but I seriously doubt it. The talk is entirely intelligible, and the other features of the productions I watched far outweigh in value any potential harm to language acquisition. Face it: this is baby fodder, meant to sooth and entertain VERY young children. Should such children be parked in front of a TV for soothing? Good question. But one that I am not prepared to answer - -it's been a long time since I've been the mother of a 1-year-old. And I understand that both babies and mothers enjoy them --must be a reason for that. Lois Bloom ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Lois Bloom, Ph.D. Edward Lee Thorndike Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Education Teachers College, Columbia University 525 West 120th Street New York, New York 10027 PHONE: 212-678-3888 (office); 203-261-4622 (home) FAX: 203-261-4689 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From v.c.gathercole at bangor.ac.uk Tue May 18 17:45:41 1999 From: v.c.gathercole at bangor.ac.uk (Ginny Mueller Gathercole) Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 17:45:41 +0000 Subject: research position Message-ID: UNIVERSITY OF WALES, BANGOR SCHOOL OF PSYCHOLOGY Research Assistant or Research Officer Salary : £15,735 - 17,570 p.a. (on R&A Grade 1A/B) Applications are invited for a three-year postdoctoral position funded by an ESRC grant on "The acquisition of Welsh mutation, gender, and grammatical categories". The successful applicant will work under Dr. Virginia Mueller Gathercole. The successful applicant will be required to have a specialisation in Psychology, Psycholinguistics, Linguistics, or related area and hold or expect to hold a Ph.D degree. Native or near-native fluency in Welsh and English are required. Experience in child language research and experimental studies desirable. The ability to program on a Macintosh computer is desirable but not essential. The post will begin in September 1999. Application forms and further particulars are available from: Personnel Services, University of Wales, Bangor, Gwynedd, LL57 2DG. Tel: 01248-382926/388132. e-mail: pos020 at bangor.ac.uk Please quote reference number 99/67 when applying. Closing dates for applications: Thursday July 1, 1999. Informal enquiries regarding this position can be directed to Dr. Virginia Mueller Gathercole, School of Psychology, University of Wales, Bangor, LL57 2DG (01248 383626; v.c.gathercole at bangor.ac.uk). Committed to Equal Opportunities Virginia C. Mueller Gathercole, Ph.D. Ysgol Seicoleg School of Pyschology Prifysgol Cymru, Bangor University of Wales, Bangor Gwynedd LL57 2DG Gwynedd LL57 2DG Cymru Wales | /\ | / \/\ Tel: 44 (0)1248 382624 | /\/ \ \ Fax: 44 (0)1248 382599 | / ======\=\ | B A N G O R From vhouwer at uia.ua.ac.be Wed May 19 12:41:10 1999 From: vhouwer at uia.ua.ac.be (Annick.DeHouwer) Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 14:41:10 +0200 Subject: Symposium 2000 (fwd) Message-ID: Dear colleagues, I am posting the message below at the request of Dr. Marion Fredman, Chair of the Multilingual Affairs Committee of the International Association for Logopedics and Phoniatrics that is organising the conference advertised below. Please do not send requests for more information to me but to Robbie Cameron (see below). Plenary speakers for the Symposium include Professors Brian MacWhinney, Michel Paradis and Catherine Snow. --Annick De Houwer ---------- Forwarded message ---------- The 2nd International Symposium on Communication Disorders in Bilingual Populations (Symposium 2000) will take place from 18-21 July 2000 at Kwa Maritane, Pilansberg National Park South Africa. For full details visit our website at or contact the Symposium Office at P O Box 27147 Parkview 2122 South Africa Tel/Fax 27 11 788 3299 or robbie.cameron at pixie.co.za From macw at cmu.edu Thu May 20 00:06:37 1999 From: macw at cmu.edu (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 20:06:37 -0400 Subject: CHILDES/BIB server back up Message-ID: Dear Info-CHILDES, The machine that was serving the CHILDES/BIB is back up. The link is on the CHILDES home page. Or else you can go to: http://alaska.psy.cmu.edu/RIS/RISWEB.isa Sorry about the downtime. --Brian MacWhinney From s.velleman at bangor.ac.uk Tue May 18 16:56:11 1999 From: s.velleman at bangor.ac.uk (Shelley L. Velleman) Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 17:56:11 +0100 Subject: language in Teletubbies Message-ID: I do agree (based on personal opinion) that, overall, the idea, pacing, content etc. of the Teletubbies is appropriate for toddlers. However, a student of mine at U. Mass. - Amherst, Sarah Schmidt, has recently completed a small study of the phonological patterns of the Teletubbies. The basic reserch question was, "Are the Teletubbies' phonologies similar to those of "real" two-year-olds?". The results can be summarized as follows: 1. In some respects, they are, but see below. 2. In some respects, they are advanced, especially in production of fricatives, liquids, and clusters. 3. In some respects, their phonologies are deviant. Of particular note are: odd substitutions for liquids (e.g., [v] for /r/) odd substitutions of liquids, including liquid clusters (e.g., gr- for initial singleton [p] and initial singleton [m]!) omissions of initial and medial consonants (as in [E?o] for "hello", but also elsewhere), including consonants which are precociously produced in other contexts (e.g., "clever" is pronounced correctly, but "look" is pronounced as [Uk]). Will this have any effect on the children who watch???? I don't know. I heard recently from some of his students that Jim Scobbie at Queen Margaret University College at Edinburgh had done some investigating re: the Teletubbies, but haven't had a chance to ask him directly about it yet. We hope to present different aspects of these results at BU and/or ASHA this fall. Shelley Velleman P.S. I have tried to get a "press pack" from the British "home" of the Tubbies, "Ragdoll Productions", with no success. How/where did you get yours?? Shanley E. M. Allen wrote: > > In my "Intro to Language Acquisition" class, I'm having the students do a > debate on the linguistic merits of the Teletubbies program, a TV program > designed for children aged 1-5 which airs on PBS in the USA, on BBC in the > UK, and in several other countries around the world. The students must > take one of three positions: (1) the language in Teletubbies is helpful in > fostering language development in child viewers, (2) the language in > Teletubbies is detrimental for the language development of child viewers, > and (3) the language in Teletubbies has no positive or negative effect on > the language development of child viewers. > > To prepare for the debate, I've given the students copies of BBC and PBS > press releases, interviews with the show's designers, interviews with the > PBS and BBC people responsible for children's programming (all of the > preceding from the BBC and PBS web sites), newspaper articles about the > show, and caregivers' comments about the show from a parenting web site. > > However, I haven't been able to find any academic research about > Teletubbies using the usual sources (CHILDES-BIB, PsycLit, ERIC, LLBA, MLA > Bibliography, etc.). Extensive web searches turn up only marketing sites, > chat room discussions, and articles on the sexual orientation of Tinky > Winky (apart from the BBC and PBS cites noted above). Also, although the > press releases and interviews with the show's designers state that the show > is based on extensive language acquisition research, the source of this > research is not cited anywhere, so it's not clear to me what research they > used (other than of course their own piloting of the show with children in > various focus groups). > > Thus, I would be very grateful if anyone could send me references to > research concerning the language used in the Teletubbies program, or help > point me in the right direction to find them myself. I would be happy to > post a summary of results if there is sufficient interest. > > Sincerely, > Shanley Allen. > > ***************************************************** > Shanley E. M. Allen, Ph.D. > Assistant Professor, Boston University > Graduate Program in Applied Linguistics > Developmental Studies Department, School of Education > 605 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA, 02215, U.S.A. > phone: +1-617-358-0354 > fax: +1-617-353-3924 > e-mail: shanley at bu.edu > ***************************************************** From lmb32 at columbia.edu Thu May 20 10:31:30 1999 From: lmb32 at columbia.edu (Lois Bloom) Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 06:31:30 -0400 Subject: language in Teletubbies Message-ID: The phonological details are interesting, but difficult to measure their potential influence I suspect. One question I had at the time was whether the TTs were saying 'uhoh' or 'hello' --both words 'fit' at times, but 'uhoh' more often in the tapes I watched (these came from ABC News). --Lois Bloom From fs3a508 at rzaixsrv2.rrz.uni-hamburg.de Thu May 20 09:55:10 1999 From: fs3a508 at rzaixsrv2.rrz.uni-hamburg.de (Juergen M. Meisel) Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 11:55:10 +0200 Subject: Bilingualism: Research Center & Jobs Message-ID: A new research center will be established at the Univeristy of Hamburg. Please find below a short description of the Center and a job announcement for one of its research projects. Jurgen M. Meisel COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH CENTER ON MULTILINGUALISM (Sonderforschungsbereich Mehrsprachigkeit) University of Hamburg A research center for the study of multilingualism, funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Science Foundation) has been established at the University of Hamburg (Germany) as of July 1999. The Center currently comprises 13 research projects investigating linguistic aspects of bi- and multilingualism. The focus of this research lies in microanalyses of oral and written communication in multilingual settings and in language development in the bilingual individual. This work starts from the assumptions that human cognition predisposes the individual to become multilingual, that the knowledge of more than one language increases communicative possibilities rather than decreasing them, and that diachronic studies of multilingualism can lead to a better under-standing of contemporary situations and to solutions for emerging problems. In order to put these claims to the test, cognitive as well as cultural studies have been designed by which specific hypotheses, based on these assumptions, are examined empirically. The multilingual settings studied include social as well as family bilingualism, postcolonial situations as well as ones resulting from labor migration, and also contexts where more than one language is used in education or at the workplace, at home or during extended or short-term stays in a foreign country. The languages studied include Aymara, Basque, Danish, English, French, German, Greek, Guarani, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Luganda, Lwo, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Turkish, and several diachronic and regional varieties of some of these. By comparing an array of linguistically, culturally, and socially diverse settings, the aim is to identify more general as well as situation-specific factors favoring multilingualism or rendering it more difficult for the indvidual and for society. The 13 research projects carried out during the three year period 1999-2002 are listed below. The Center is organized into two groups. Group A, entitled Oral and Written Texts and Types of Discourse in Multilingual communication, investigates the production and comprehension of multilingual language use in various social, cultural and institutional contexts, contemporary as well as previous ones. Group B, The Development of Multilingualism, is concerned with diachronic change as well as with the ontogenesis of multilingualism, investigating the simultaneous acquisition of more than one first language and the successive acquisition of several languages, and contrasting both to monolingual first language development. COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH CENTER ON MULTILINGUALISM (Sonderforschungsbereich Mehrsprachigkeit) Chair: Prof.Dr. Jurgen M. Meisel Universitat Hamburg Romanisches Seminar von Melle-Park 6 D-20146 Hamburg jmm at rrz.uni-hamburg.de Co-chair and coordinator of group A: Prof.Dr. Jochen Rehbein rehbein at rrz.uni-hamburg.de Co-chair and coordinator of group B: Prof.Dr. Conxita Lleo lleo at rrz.uni-hamburg.de Group A: Oral and Written Texts and Types of Discourse in Multilingual Communication A1: Japanese and German expert discourse in mono- and multilingual settings (Principal investigator: Jochen Rehbein) A2: Interpreting in the hospital (PI: Kristin Buhrig) A3: Processing of spoken language in the process of interpreting (PI: Walther von Hahn) A4: Covert translation (PI: Juliane House) A5: Literacy practices in cross-cultural perspective (PI: Mechthild Reh) A6: Semicommunication and receptive multilingualism in contemporary Scandinavia (PI: Kurt Braunmuller) A7: Disticha Catonis: Didactic forms of discourse between Latin and the vernacular (PI: Nikolaus Henkel) A8: Stylistic levels and diglossia in the modern Hellenic world (PI: Hans Eideneier) Group B: The Development of Multilingualism B1: Multilingualism as cause and effect of language change: Historical syntax of Romance languages (PI: Jurgen M. Meisel) B2: Simultaneous and successive acquisition of bilingualism (PI: Jurgen M. Meisel) B3: Prosodic constraints on phonological and morphological development in bilingual first language acquisition (PI: Conxita Lleo) B4: Bilingualism in early childhood: Comparing Italian/German and French/German (PI: Natascha Muller) B5: Linguistic connectivity in bilingual Turkish-German children (PI: Jochen Rehbein) JOB OPPORTUNITIES 1 Post-doctoral researcher (full position) 1 Post-graduate researcher (half position) in THE research project on "Simultaneous and Successive Acquisition of Bilingualism". This project will investigate similarities and differences in grammatical development between bilingual first language acquisition, monolingual first language acquisition, and adult second language acquisition. It is one of 13 projects of the Collaborative Research Center on Multilingualism funded by the Deutsche Forschungsge-meinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) to be established at the University of Hamburg as of July 1st, 1999. Pending final decision by the DFG, both positions will begin on this date and will extend for a period of three years. The post-doctoral candidate will be expected to co-direct this research group together with J.M. Meisel. The post-doctoral position can be renewed for one three-year period. The salary of the post-doctoral researcher corresponds to that of an assistant professor in German universities (BAT IIa). The post-graduate researcher must hold an M.A. (or equivalent). He or she will receive half of the BAT IIa salary for a work load of appr. 19 hours per week and will be expected to complete a doctoral dissertation on a topic related to the topic of the research project. Requirements sought are: good knowledge of syntactic theory (Principles and Parameters Theory and possibly of the Minimalist Program), experience with language acquisition research, and good knowledge of at least two of the following languages: German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Basque. Also desirable would be familiarity with speech processing research and/or experience with corpus analysis and/or com-puter skills. Send application (CV, list of publications, names of two referees) by June 15, 1999 to Prof. J. M. Meisel, University of Hamburg, Romanisches Seminar, von Melle-Park 6, D 20146 Hamburg; for further inquiries contact jmm at rrz.uni-hamburg.de ========================================================== Juergen M. Meisel jmm at rrz.uni-hamburg.de Universitaet Hamburg Tel (+49-40) 428 38-4793 Romanisches Seminar Fax (+49-40) 428 38-4147 von Melle-Park 6 = NEW PHONE NUMBER! D 20146 Hamburg ========================================================== From cec at cwcom.net Thu May 20 10:50:13 1999 From: cec at cwcom.net (Cecile De Cat) Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 11:50:13 +0100 Subject: dislocations and other peripheral elements Message-ID: I wish to thank all the people who kindly sent me references, comments and suggestions with respect to the query I put on the list a few days ago. The replies were from Monique Vion, Aurora Bel, Dan Slobin, Elena Nicoladis, Eve Clark, John Grinstead, Gee Macrory, Mela Sarkar, Tom Roeper, Twila Tardif, and William B. Snyder. Languages mentionned: French, Turkish, Catalan, Spanish, Cantonese, Chinese (and particularly, Beijing dialect), English. References cited: Aksu-Koc, A., & Slobin, D. I. (1985). Acquisition of Turkish. In D. I. Slobin (Ed.), The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition: Vol. 1. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Clark, Eve (1985) The acquisition of French. From her chapter-cum-monograph that appeared in Slobin 1985, The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition (vol.1) Ferdinand, Astrid (1996) The Development of Functional Categories. The Acquisition of the Subject in French, PhD. Dissertation, Holland Institute of Generative Linguistics (particularly chapter 6). Friedemann, Marc-Ariel (1993/94) The Underlying Position of External Arguments in French: A Study in Adult and Child Grammar, Language Acquisicion, 3:3, 209-255. Grinstead, John (1999) His dissertation on the syntax of child Catalan and Spanish addresses the emergence of left-dislocated elements. Kuntay, Aylin and Dan Slobin wrote a paper on Turkish parental input, including dislocations; They have just finished a review paper on Turkich child language, to appear in the new journal, Turkic Linguistics. Labelle, Marie & Daniel Valois (1996) The Status of Post-verbal Subjects in French Child Language, Probus, 8, 53-80. Pierce, Amy. (1992) Language Acquisition and Syntactic Theory: a Comparative Analysis of French and English Child Grammars. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Powers, Susan. (1996) The Growth of the Phrase Marker: Evidence from Subjects, University of Maryland, Maryland. Vion, M. (1992). The role of intonation in processing left and right dislocations in French. Journal of experimental child Psychology. 53, 45-71 work by Virginia Brennan, cited in T.Roeper's paper on Merger theory that appeared in Clahsen (ed. (1996) Generative Perspectives on Language Acquisition. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Again, thanks a lot Cecile De Cat From a.karmiloff-Smith at ich.ucl.ac.uk Thu May 20 13:56:40 1999 From: a.karmiloff-Smith at ich.ucl.ac.uk (Annette Karmiloff-Smith) Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 13:56:40 +0000 Subject: infant number - responses Message-ID: I put out the following request on CHILDES/DEV-EUROPE and got the following replies from Alan Slater, Bruce Hood and Maria Nunes, for which many thanks. >I know of all the work on infant number in 3 month olds upwards. >But I do not know of any work on neonates' processing of numerosity >>discriminations, etc. although I heard it referred to on the radio. >Can someone point me to references please on newborns. >Many thanks >Annette It seems only one study has focused on newborns with respect to visually presented stimuli, that it was difficult to replicate except with dot displays, and that one has of course to watch density differences: >Antell, S., & Keating, D. (1983). Perception of numerical invariance in >neonates. Child Development, vol 54, pp 695-702. > and one study on newsborns with language-relevant auditory stimuli: >Bijeljac-Babic, R., Bertoncini, J., & Mehler, J. (1991), How do >four-day-old infants categorize multisyllabic utterances? >Developmental Psychology, 29, 711-721. Other refs. were re older infants which we all probably know, plus one piece of work I didn't know about: >Lynne Tan, a previous student of Peter >Bryant who did her PhD on infant's understanding of numerosity at about >one year ago. Her e-mail is: lynne_tan at nus.edu.sg. > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Professor Annette Karmiloff-Smith Head, Neurocognitive Development Unit Institute of Child Health 30 Guilford Street London WC1N 1EH, U.K. tel: +44 171 905 2754 secretary: 242 9789 ext.0735 fax: +44 171 242 7717 mobile: 0961 10 59 63 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From a.karmiloff-Smith at ich.ucl.ac.uk Thu May 20 14:20:51 1999 From: a.karmiloff-Smith at ich.ucl.ac.uk (Annette Karmiloff-Smith) Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 14:20:51 +0000 Subject: language in Teletubbies Message-ID: out of curiosity, is the US version of Teletubbies using the British voicing or has the voiceover been redone to a US accent? I heard it in French the other day and thought the language sounded more "adult-like" than what I'd heard on British TV but this was just a quick impression of course. Annette K-S At 17:56 +0100 18/5/99, Shelley L. Velleman wrote: >I do agree (based on personal opinion) that, overall, the idea, pacing, >content etc. of the Teletubbies is appropriate for toddlers. > >However, a student of mine at U. Mass. - Amherst, Sarah Schmidt, >has recently completed a small study of the phonological patterns of the >Teletubbies. The basic reserch question was, "Are the Teletubbies' >phonologies similar to those of "real" two-year-olds?". The results can >be summarized as follows: > >1. In some respects, they are, but see below. > >2. In some respects, they are advanced, especially in production of >fricatives, liquids, and clusters. > >3. In some respects, their phonologies are deviant. Of particular note >are: > odd substitutions for liquids (e.g., [v] for /r/) > odd substitutions of liquids, including liquid clusters (e.g., gr- for >initial singleton [p] and initial singleton [m]!) > omissions of initial and medial consonants (as in [E?o] for "hello", >but also elsewhere), including consonants which are precociously >produced in other contexts (e.g., "clever" is pronounced correctly, but >"look" is pronounced as [Uk]). > >Will this have any effect on the children who watch???? I don't know. > >I heard recently from some of his students that Jim Scobbie at Queen >Margaret University College at Edinburgh had done some investigating re: >the Teletubbies, but haven't had a chance to ask him directly about it >yet. > >We hope to present different aspects of these results at BU and/or ASHA >this fall. > >Shelley Velleman > > >P.S. I have tried to get a "press pack" from the British "home" of the >Tubbies, "Ragdoll Productions", with no success. How/where did you get >yours?? > > > >Shanley E. M. Allen wrote: >> >> In my "Intro to Language Acquisition" class, I'm having the students do a >> debate on the linguistic merits of the Teletubbies program, a TV program >> designed for children aged 1-5 which airs on PBS in the USA, on BBC in the >> UK, and in several other countries around the world. The students must >> take one of three positions: (1) the language in Teletubbies is helpful in >> fostering language development in child viewers, (2) the language in >> Teletubbies is detrimental for the language development of child viewers, >> and (3) the language in Teletubbies has no positive or negative effect on >> the language development of child viewers. >> >> To prepare for the debate, I've given the students copies of BBC and PBS >> press releases, interviews with the show's designers, interviews with the >> PBS and BBC people responsible for children's programming (all of the >> preceding from the BBC and PBS web sites), newspaper articles about the >> show, and caregivers' comments about the show from a parenting web site. >> >> However, I haven't been able to find any academic research about >> Teletubbies using the usual sources (CHILDES-BIB, PsycLit, ERIC, LLBA, MLA >> Bibliography, etc.). Extensive web searches turn up only marketing sites, >> chat room discussions, and articles on the sexual orientation of Tinky >> Winky (apart from the BBC and PBS cites noted above). Also, although the >> press releases and interviews with the show's designers state that the show >> is based on extensive language acquisition research, the source of this >> research is not cited anywhere, so it's not clear to me what research they >> used (other than of course their own piloting of the show with children in >> various focus groups). >> >> Thus, I would be very grateful if anyone could send me references to >> research concerning the language used in the Teletubbies program, or help >> point me in the right direction to find them myself. I would be happy to >> post a summary of results if there is sufficient interest. >> >> Sincerely, >> Shanley Allen. >> >> ***************************************************** >> Shanley E. M. Allen, Ph.D. >> Assistant Professor, Boston University >> Graduate Program in Applied Linguistics >> Developmental Studies Department, School of Education >> 605 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA, 02215, U.S.A. >> phone: +1-617-358-0354 >> fax: +1-617-353-3924 >> e-mail: shanley at bu.edu >> ***************************************************** From s.velleman at bangor.ac.uk Thu May 20 13:48:54 1999 From: s.velleman at bangor.ac.uk (Shelley L. Velleman) Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 14:48:54 +0100 Subject: language in Teletubbies Message-ID: I had read in some media report that it was re-dubbed for American audiences, but I think that may have been the announcer only or something, because the voices and the phono patterns seem the same to me in both versions. (Certainly, on the American shows, they say things like "Mind the puddle", which have obviously not been translated!) Shelley From feldman at stripe.Colorado.EDU Thu May 20 16:24:28 1999 From: feldman at stripe.Colorado.EDU (FELDMAN ANDREA) Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 10:24:28 -0600 Subject: language in Teletubbies Message-ID: I think 'uhoh' is sometimes used by the Teletubbies to mean 'hello'. (I have often watched the show with my three-year-old.) --Andrea Feldman On Thu, 20 May 1999, Lois Bloom wrote: > > The phonological details are interesting, but difficult to measure their > potential influence I suspect. One question I had at the time was whether > the TTs were saying 'uhoh' or 'hello' --both words 'fit' at times, but > 'uhoh' more often in the tapes I watched (these came from ABC News). > > --Lois Bloom > > From a.karmiloff-Smith at ich.ucl.ac.uk Thu May 20 19:25:02 1999 From: a.karmiloff-Smith at ich.ucl.ac.uk (Annette Karmiloff-Smith) Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 19:25:02 +0000 Subject: infant number - responses Message-ID: thanks, Peter, I'll inform all just in case someone tries to find it. Annette >Annette, > >I've just noticed an error in the reference I sent you >(Bijeljac-Babic et al.). The date of vol 29 is 1993, not 1991. > >Sorry, > >Peter > > >----------------------------------------------------------- >Peter Willatts, >Department of Psychology, University of Dundee, >Dundee, DD1 4HN, Scotland, UK. >tel: +44 1382 344618 >fax: +44 1382 229993 From mabel at dole.lsi.ukans.edu Thu May 20 20:15:40 1999 From: mabel at dole.lsi.ukans.edu (Mabel Rice) Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 14:15:40 -0600 Subject: teletubbies Message-ID: I can provide some further background on the Teletubbies and language questions raised by Shanley Allen. Last spring, I was contacted by PBS to review several Teletubbies tapes that were to be aired on PBS beginning in April ‘98. They provided written materials that included press clippings of the controversies surrounding the charactersÂ’ use of baby talk, and descriptive information about the development of the series, and bio material on Anne Wood and Andrew Davenport, developers of the series. Andrew is a graduate of University College London where he majored in Speech Sciences. The packet of material did not include any specific information about formative research. I viewed the two episodes they provided for that purpose, and have occasionally viewed bits and pieces of PBS broadcasting, so do not feel expert on the program but my rather general response is favorable, in light of some of my previous research. I sketch here the gist of my comments for PBS. First, it seemed timely to provide some material suitable for toddlers. There is extensive documentation of the fact that young children are exposed to a lot of TV, so it is positive to have something potentially beneficial for their viewing. In a study with Dafna Lemish in which toddlers were observed in viewing contexts in their home, we found potentially language-facilitative caretaker-child interactions during the viewing, especially of educational TV such as Sesame Street. (Cf Lemish & Rice, Television as a talking picture book: a prop for language acquisition, J Child Language, 1986, 13, 251-274.) As these findings and other studies indicate, even young children are cognitively active viewers of the medium of television; they like to talk about what they see, they recognize objects and can relate them to objects in their own experience, and they seem to want to make sense of their viewing and to communicate that to others. Other studies have found that children (and chimps) prefer to view other children (or chimps), i.e., that they watch most intently others like themselves. It would be interesting to see if this holds for Teletubbies. Next, in the episodes I viewed, the writers present dialog in ways likely to appeal to and be understood by young children. The vocabulary levels are of suitable content, and there is considerable redundancy, both in the sense of talking about the here-and-now and in the sense of repeated presentations of the same words/concepts. The sentence structures are also kept at simple clausal levels. These attributes characterize Sesame Street and Mr Rogers as well (cf Rice & Haight, 1986, “Motherese” of Mr Rogers: A description of the dialogue of educational television programs. Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 51, 282-287). These and other features may be instrumental in the positive effect of Sesame Street viewing on vocabulary development (cf Rice, Huston, Truglio, & Wright, 1990, Words from Sesame Street: Learning Vocabulary While Viewing, Developmental Psychology, 26, 421-428) (and why there seems to be no effect for adult TV fare such as soap operas or for entertainment animation which has very adult-like dialog). I was struck by some innovative uses of dialog in Teletubbies. One is the charactersÂ’ use of “Baby Talk”, and it will be interesting to learn how accurately the producers have scripted it and how children respond to it (Sarah SchmidtÂ’s analysis should be helpful here). The media flap reminds me of the reaction to Oscar the Grouch, who says things like “Me want cookie,” which caused a bit of an uproar at the time, but which seems to be accepted by children as part of his character. I suspect that young viewers will regard the dialog of the teletubbies in the same way as they regard the other sources of “baby talk” in their lives. The writers built in some interesting ways to highlight adult dialog for the children, in that it often appears as the voices of the “Voice Trumpets,” which are part of the showÂ’s emphasis on interactive technology and appears as a sort of flower- microphone that sticks up out of the ground like a flower. This “baby talk” for the teletubbies and “adult talk” for the “voice trumpets” is an interesting way to differentiate the two “registers” and it would be interesting to know if the children benefit from it. Finally, the “real world” of live children, often toddlers, is in the program via the televised segments where further overlap of dialog and referents is provided in the form of live dialog from children and voice-over narration. So when the live footage begins of real children, the viewers know they are going to be hearing “real talk” of children and adults. These techniques serve to associate the presentation forms with the kind of dialog presented, which could be very effective in helping the little viewers follow the dialog. The media focus on the "baby talk" of the lead characters seems to have overlooked the other parts of the program A final comment--it is my recollection that I was told that the US version had been dubbed to eliminate the phrases and lexical items that donÂ’t jump the Atlantic, but perhaps they did not do a comprehensive dubbing of the script and a few bits remain. Let me repeat that I do not attest to a scientific evaluation of the programÂ’s effectiveness in fostering language development, nor do I know of such an investigation. And I do not have an investment in the production company and am not a regular viewer. Happy viewing, Mabel From z2221742 at student.unsw.edu.au Thu May 20 23:03:18 1999 From: z2221742 at student.unsw.edu.au (Eiko Ushida) Date: Fri, 21 May 1999 09:03:18 +1000 Subject: language in Teletubbies Message-ID: I do agree (based on personal opinion) that, overall, the idea, pacing, content etc. of the Teletubbies is appropriate for toddlers. However, a student of mine at U. Mass. - Amherst, Sarah Schmidt, has recently completed a small study of the phonological patterns of the Teletubbies. The basic reserch question was, "Are the Teletubbies' phonologies similar to those of "real" two-year-olds?". The results can be summarized as follows: 1. In some respects, they are, but see below. 2. In some respects, they are advanced, especially in production of fricatives, liquids, and clusters. 3. In some respects, their phonologies are deviant. Of particular note are: odd substitutions for liquids (e.g., [v] for /r/) odd substitutions of liquids, including liquid clusters (e.g., gr- for initial singleton [p] and initial singleton [m]!) omissions of initial and medial consonants (as in [E?o] for "hello", but also elsewhere), including consonants which are precociously produced in other contexts (e.g., "clever" is pronounced correctly, but "look" is pronounced as [Uk]). Will this have any effect on the children who watch???? I don't know. I heard recently from some of his students that Jim Scobbie at Queen Margaret University College at Edinburgh had done some investigating re: the Teletubbies, but haven't had a chance to ask him directly about it yet. We hope to present different aspects of these results at BU and/or ASHA this fall. Shelley Velleman P.S. I have tried to get a "press pack" from the British "home" of the Tubbies, "Ragdoll Productions", with no success. How/where did you get yours?? Shanley E. M. Allen wrote: > > In my "Intro to Language Acquisition" class, I'm having the students do a > debate on the linguistic merits of the Teletubbies program, a TV program > designed for children aged 1-5 which airs on PBS in the USA, on BBC in the > UK, and in several other countries around the world. The students must > take one of three positions: (1) the language in Teletubbies is helpful in > fostering language development in child viewers, (2) the language in > Teletubbies is detrimental for the language development of child viewers, > and (3) the language in Teletubbies has no positive or negative effect on > the language development of child viewers. > > To prepare for the debate, I've given the students copies of BBC and PBS > press releases, interviews with the show's designers, interviews with the > PBS and BBC people responsible for children's programming (all of the > preceding from the BBC and PBS web sites), newspaper articles about the > show, and caregivers' comments about the show from a parenting web site. > > However, I haven't been able to find any academic research about > Teletubbies using the usual sources (CHILDES-BIB, PsycLit, ERIC, LLBA, MLA > Bibliography, etc.). Extensive web searches turn up only marketing sites, > chat room discussions, and articles on the sexual orientation of Tinky > Winky (apart from the BBC and PBS cites noted above). Also, although the > press releases and interviews with the show's designers state that the show > is based on extensive language acquisition research, the source of this > research is not cited anywhere, so it's not clear to me what research they > used (other than of course their own piloting of the show with children in > various focus groups). > > Thus, I would be very grateful if anyone could send me references to > research concerning the language used in the Teletubbies program, or help > point me in the right direction to find them myself. I would be happy to > post a summary of results if there is sufficient interest. > > Sincerely, > Shanley Allen. > > ***************************************************** > Shanley E. M. Allen, Ph.D. > Assistant Professor, Boston University > Graduate Program in Applied Linguistics > Developmental Studies Department, School of Education > 605 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA, 02215, U.S.A. > phone: +1-617-358-0354 > fax: +1-617-353-3924 > e-mail: shanley at bu.edu > ***************************************************** ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Eiko Ushida University of New South Wales From feldman at stripe.Colorado.EDU Fri May 21 01:54:21 1999 From: feldman at stripe.Colorado.EDU (FELDMAN ANDREA) Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 19:54:21 -0600 Subject: language in Teletubbies Message-ID: I have just received a reply (off list) that mentions that the Po doll says 'eh oh' for 'hello'--perhaps a British pronunciation of 'uh oh' ? I wonder if the writers of the show chose this word (or pronunciation) to mimic children's use of the word 'hello' for 'telephone' (though my child used the word 'bye bye' for telephone')--I can imagine a rather far-fetched connection, if a caregiver said 'uh oh' every time the phone rang... Andrea Feldman On Thu, 20 May 1999, FELDMAN ANDREA wrote: > I think 'uhoh' is sometimes used by the Teletubbies to mean 'hello'. > (I have often watched the show with my three-year-old.) > > --Andrea Feldman > On Thu, 20 May 1999, Lois Bloom wrote: > > > > > The phonological details are interesting, but difficult to measure their > > potential influence I suspect. One question I had at the time was whether > > the TTs were saying 'uhoh' or 'hello' --both words 'fit' at times, but > > 'uhoh' more often in the tapes I watched (these came from ABC News). > > > > --Lois Bloom > > > > > > From eclark at psych.stanford.edu Fri May 21 05:23:08 1999 From: eclark at psych.stanford.edu (Eve V. Clark) Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 22:23:08 -0700 Subject: Fwd: Re: language in Teletubbies Message-ID: Perhaps there are TWO forms here, eh-oh (hello, without the 'h' or 'l' sounds) and uh-oh. Uh-oh is certainly current in British English (used in much teh same way as in the US with young children), and the other form may be an attempt to represent infant speech without the medial -l- in hello. I haven't heard any of the programs so this could be far off the mark, but Americans sometimes have trouble with British vowels... Eve Clark ================== >Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 19:54:21 -0600 (MDT) >From: FELDMAN ANDREA >Subject: Re: language in Teletubbies > >I have just received a reply (off list) that mentions that the >Po doll says 'eh oh' for 'hello'--perhaps a British pronunciation >of 'uh oh' ? I wonder if the writers of the show chose this >word (or pronunciation) to mimic children's use of the word >'hello' for 'telephone' (though my child used the word 'bye bye' >for telephone')--I can imagine a rather far-fetched connection, >if a caregiver said 'uh oh' every time the phone rang... >Andrea Feldman > >On Thu, 20 May 1999, FELDMAN ANDREA wrote: > >> I think 'uhoh' is sometimes used by the Teletubbies to mean 'hello'. >> (I have often watched the show with my three-year-old.) >> >> --Andrea Feldman >> On Thu, 20 May 1999, Lois Bloom wrote: >> >> > >> > The phonological details are interesting, but difficult to measure their >> > potential influence I suspect. One question I had at the time was whether >> > the TTs were saying 'uhoh' or 'hello' --both words 'fit' at times, but >> > 'uhoh' more often in the tapes I watched (these came from ABC News). >> > >> > --Lois Bloom >> > >> > >> >> > From s.velleman at bangor.ac.uk Fri May 21 09:21:08 1999 From: s.velleman at bangor.ac.uk (Shelley L. Velleman) Date: Fri, 21 May 1999 10:21:08 +0100 Subject: language in Teletubbies Message-ID: In the shows that I've watched, there are times when "hello" is clearly the target word (based on context) and others when "uh-oh" is. I haven't gone back and counted our transcriptions, but I believe that "hello" has [E] more often as its first vowel, while "uh-oh" more often has [^].. At times, only the context can differentiate them (or, at least, the ear can't). Maria Margaronis, in an article in The Nation (3/16/98), quotes a statement which she was required to sign, to confirm "my understanding of some salient Teletubby facts" before she was allowed to interview Ken Viselman, American representative of Ragdoll Productions. This statement, reportedly, included the following: "The Teletubbies do not say 'haro' as reported in various stories in the U.K. and U.S. press. They say 'eh-oh' and 'oh-oh'." So, apparently, Ragdoll Productions intends these to be two different word forms. By the way, I mis-spelled my collaborator's name in my first message: It's Sarah _Schmit_ (no "d"). Sorry, Sarah! Shelley Velleman From lf at lri.fr Fri May 21 09:21:10 1999 From: lf at lri.fr (Lise Fontaine) Date: Fri, 21 May 1999 11:21:10 +0200 Subject: eh-oh vs. uh-oh in Teletubbies Message-ID: Having watched the program far too many times and in three versions, I would have to say that I think there are indeed two forms. It is certainly very clear in the version from France that something like e?o is used as a greeting, with a wave, (interesting that they have kept that and not something close to bonjour) so you get a series of e?o Dipsy e?o Lala, etc. as they go through each name saying 'hello' ('bonjour' whatever). I am not sure of the use of uh-oh (oh dear) in the French version, but it is certainly there in the US and British versions in a context of some sort of regret. The male voice over has been changed in the US version to an American voice (although I wouldn't be willing to bet money on that, it's how it sounded to me.) My 18 month old seems to distinguish between the two forms (am I crazy?), he puts his hand in front of his mouth and says uh-oh when he drops something, I haven't heard him say anything like e?o and he doesn't seem to say anything at all for hello/bonjour. He does produce something like which sounds to me like a cross between bye bye and au revoir. (however I don't think it is necessarily that) He hears both regularly from us and of course the Teletubbies say it about a million times at the end of the tape (and he watches it in English and in French). best wishes, Lise Fontaine > Perhaps there are TWO forms here, eh-oh (hello, without the 'h' or >'l' sounds) and uh-oh. Uh-oh is certainly current in British English >(used in much teh same way as in the US with young children), and the >other form may be an attempt to represent infant speech without the >medial -l- in hello. From mcoimbra at portoweb.com.br Fri May 21 13:37:37 1999 From: mcoimbra at portoweb.com.br (Miriam Coimbra) Date: Fri, 21 May 1999 10:37:37 -0300 Subject: teletubbies in Brazilian Portuguese Message-ID: The teletubbies characters when speaking Brazilian Portuguese have somewhat different phonological patterns than the ones summarized by Sarah Schimdt for English. It seems that the Brazilian tv network responsible for the broadcasting and translation adjusted the language to an older age range (maybe 3 to 4 years-old). The Brazilian version agrees with the English version in relation to the production of fricatives and liquids in words like: dois 'two'[dojs] bola 'ball'[bola] The production of: tchau 'bye' [tSaw] gipsy [dZipsi] is advanced for a toddler in Brazilian Portuguese However, I have not found any deviant productions in Portuguese such as the ones pointed out by Sarah. In relation to clusters, only once in the entire program the characters reduced a cluster to a CV sequence in the word tres 'three' [tejs]. It seems to me the Brazilian version has lost the most important chracteristic of the English version which is the intention to make the characters sound like a toddler. Miriam Coimbra Unijui Ijui, RS Brasil Miriam Coimbra Professor of Linguistics Department of Communication, Arts and Language (DELAC) UNIJUI Ijui, RS Brasil mcoimbra at main.unijui.tche.br From Edy.Veneziano at pse.unige.ch Tue May 18 15:48:33 1999 From: Edy.Veneziano at pse.unige.ch (Edy Veneziano) Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 17:48:33 +0200 Subject: teletubbies in Brazilian Portuguese Message-ID: I have never watched Teletubbies but I enjoyed the discussion nevertheless. One thing puzzles me however and the last message that came through made me more aware of it: "It seems that the Brazilian tv network responsible for the broadcasting and translation adjusted the language to an older age range (maybe 3 to 4 years-old). " There seems to be an implicit assumption here that for language to be 'interesting', 'attractive', 'good' or whatever on these lines, for a child of a given age it should present characteristics similar to those the children of that age group are supposed to produce. Am I overinterpreting? or is there something like that (at least in the mind of some of the discussants)? This would be a new notion for me and I would like to know more about it. Edy Veneziano ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Edy Veneziano Université Nancy 2 and Université Paris V-CNRS ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ From Eak31852 at aol.com Fri May 21 22:54:17 1999 From: Eak31852 at aol.com (Eak31852 at aol.com) Date: Fri, 21 May 1999 18:54:17 EDT Subject: age targets for TV language Message-ID: RE: EdyVeneziano's question about the assumption that interesting language needs to reflect charachteristics of the viewers... There was early popular press that the Teletubbies were unique in targetting a younger audience (than, say Sesame Street) and so, reflected earlier language development characteristics. Early reports claimed the language was "babbling". I am curious too whether anyone in this discussion is making the assumption that early language users are more interested in hearing "their own tongue." -- That seems to have been an assumption of the TV programmers, in this case. The original question was based on Shanley's class assignment "Is the Teletubbies language helpful, detrimental, or neither to language development?" Elizabeth K. From Edy.Veneziano at pse.unige.ch Sat May 22 10:25:08 1999 From: Edy.Veneziano at pse.unige.ch (Edy Veneziano) Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 12:25:08 +0200 Subject: teletubbies in Holland Message-ID: Thank you Lise for this further comments. Let me make my point clearer however. What is more interesting or attractive to children of different ages is an empirical question that can find an answer relatively easily (and here, given the differences you describe, we may have a cheap (for us) possibility to look into the question). However, on a theoretical basis, I wonder why child's developmental 'levels' of language, instead of caregiver's , were taken into consideration and why some of us seem to accept it in a 'matter of fact' way (I may be wrong on this point though, whence my question). It seems to me that Shanley's original class assignment should include this issue in its treatment. Edy Veneziano Lise Fontaine wrote: > > >"It seems that the Brazilian tv network responsible for the > >broadcasting and translation adjusted the language to an older age range > >(maybe 3 to 4 years-old). " > > I recently met a family from Holland and since we both had young children > for some reason Teletubbies came up and they said that they had purchased > the BBC version since they found that in the Dutch version the language was > too "baby-ish" > > it seems then that when prepared for different languages, producers have > changed the language level or perhaps it is cultural, what is considered > "too young" for the children watching the program. > > also, the language levels in the French version at least vary from the > youngest Teletubbie (Po) to the oldest (Tinkie Winkie), I suppose in an > attempt to mark stages in development. Has anyone else noticed this in > other versions? > > >There seems to be an implicit assumption here that for language to be > '>interesting', 'attractive', 'good' or whatever on these lines, for a > >child of a given age it should present characteristics similar to those > >the children of that age group are supposed to produce. > > In the case of the Dutch family, they wanted a program for their child that > represented an 'older' child's language, or at least in their view. > > Lise From Thomas.Klee at newcastle.ac.uk Fri May 28 13:28:10 1999 From: Thomas.Klee at newcastle.ac.uk (Thomas Klee) Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 13:28:10 +0000 Subject: Post at University of Newcastle upon Tyne Message-ID: University of Newcastle upon Tyne DEPARTMENT OF SPEECH LECTURER OR SENIOR LECTURER IN PAEDIATRIC SPEECH-LANGUAGE PATHOLOGY £16,655 -£34,464 p.a. We would like to appoint an active researcher with expertise in developmental speech and language disorders, who will contribute to the department's research profile (graded 4 in the 1996 RAE), and who can demonstrate a strong commitment to the department's goal of providing high quality education in Speech & Language Therapy at undergraduate and postgraduate levels and in the department's expanding Continuing Professional Development programmes. The department has excellent resources including paediatric and adult clinical facilities and teaching and research laboratories. A clinical qualification in speech and language therapy would be an advantage. The post is available from 1 September 1999 or as soon as possible thereafter. Informal inquiries may be made to either Professor Barbara Dodd (b.j.dodd at ncl.ac.uk) or Dr Thomas Klee, Head of Department (thomas.klee at ncl.ac.uk). Telephone: 0191 222 7388. The department's website is at www.newcastle.ac.uk/speech. For further information please telephone +44 (0) 191 222 8834 (24 hour answerphone) or fax. +44 (0) 191 222 5694 quoting Ref. E030 or write to: Human Resources Section (Ref. E030), University of Newcastle, 1 Park Terrace, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, England. Closing date for applications is 29 June 1999. From macw at cmu.edu Mon May 31 21:31:27 1999 From: macw at cmu.edu (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Mon, 31 May 1999 17:31:27 -0400 Subject: new corpus on children exposed to cocaine in utero Message-ID: Dear Info-CHILDES, I am happy to announce the addition to CHILDES of a corpus of samples of the language of children exposed to cocaine in utero. The data come from Margo Malakoff of Harvey Mudd College and Linda Mayes of Yale University. The following is a description of this new data set. It can be found in /clinical/malakoff.sit. Please note that I have decided to use the name "clinical" rather than "impaired" to refer to the directory of language from clinical subtypes in order to avoid leading people to make implicit judgments regarding the nature of the language of clinical subjects. --Brian MacWhinney A sample of 74 infants (46 drug cocaine-and-other-drug-exposed and 28 non-cocaine-exposed) were randomly selected from a large longitudinal study of the effects of prenatal cocaine exposure on infant and child development. The mean age of the cocaine-and-other-drug-exposed group was 24 months, 5 days (range from 22.9 to 26.1 months); the mean age of the non-cocaine-exposed group was 24 months, 4 days (range from 22.9 to 26.8 months). There were 19 boys and 27 girls in the cocaine-and-other-drug-exposed group and 10 boys and 18 girls in the non-cocaine-exposed group. All children were accompanied by mothers. Maternal cocaine exposure status was determined either by self-report of use during pregnancy or by a positive urine screen at a prenatal visit or at delivery. Non-exposed status was ascertained by maternal and infant urine toxicology and a negative maternal history of cocaine use during pregnancy and at the time of delivery. All infants in this sample remained in their mothers¹ care after delivery. The sample was predominantly African American (85% cocaine-and-other-drug-exposed and 82% non-cocaine-exposed). Most women were in their twenties, however cocaine-and-other-drug-using mothers were significantly older (mean age = 28.5) than non-cocaine-exposed mothers (mean age = 24.9) , F(1,71) = 12.74, p < .001. The majority of the women in both groups were single mothers. There were no differences in the proportion of mothers in each group receiving prenatal care, and the majority of women in both groups had at least one prenatal visit. Additional background information on children and mothers is available from Malakoff, M. E., Mayes, L. C., Schottenfeld, R.S., & Howell, S. (1999) Language production at 24 month-old inner city children of cocaine-and-other-drug-using mothers. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology., 20. From TJimerson at aol.com Mon May 31 17:25:31 1999 From: TJimerson at aol.com (TJimerson at aol.com) Date: Mon, 31 May 1999 13:25:31 EDT Subject: theory of mind measures Message-ID: Hello everyone. I am interested in measuring the "theory of mind" of young children (ages 2-6). I am primarily interested in measures that might be appropriate for assessing theory of mind in mother-child interactions during free-play and semi-structured teaching tasks. Does anyone out there have any good leads? Unfortunately, most of the measures I have come across are designed as theory of mind tasks. Any feedback would be much appreciated. Thanks! Tiffany Jimerson University of South Florida at Tampa From macw at cmu.edu Sat May 29 17:20:25 1999 From: macw at cmu.edu (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Sat, 29 May 1999 13:20:25 -0400 Subject: adult bilingual corpus (Chinese-Hungarian) Message-ID: Dear Info-CHILDES, I am happy to announce the addition of another corpus of adult second language acquisition data to CHILDES. This corpus was collected in Hungary by Juliet Langman of the Division of Bicultural-Bilingual Studies at the Universtiy of Texas at San Antonio. The corpus can be found in langman.sit and langman.zip in the /bilingual directory of CHILDES. Following is the documentation for the corpus. --Brian MacWhinney **** This corpus is made up of 10 files consisting of interviews conducted in 1994 with 11 Chinese immigrants living in Hungary. The bulk of the conversation is in Hungarian, although in the case of those who speak English there is also English, and in the case of one transcript (KIN10) there are significant amounts of Chinese (with a Hungarian translation in a %tra dependent tier). Interviews focused on issues related to their arrival in Hungary as well as their daily life activities. With the exception of KIN2 and KIN10 none of the subjects had had formal training in Hungarian. Interviewers were the researcher, as well as three different Hungarian undergraduates. Data were collected with two purposes in mind: the analyses of communicative strategies among adult second language learners learning in a non-structured environment, and the analysis of the acquisition of morphology of an agglutinative language. From shanley at bu.edu Mon May 31 00:01:32 1999 From: shanley at bu.edu (Shanley E. M. Allen) Date: Sun, 30 May 1999 20:01:32 -0400 Subject: summary of "language in Teletubbies" Message-ID: A sincere thank you to everyone who responded to my post concerning research on language use in the Teletubbies program. Since most of the discussion took place on the list, I'll just highlight the main results and share a couple of off-list communications. WEB SITES The web sites I mentioned in my post are these: PBS: http://www.pbs.org/teletubbies/ BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/teletubbies/ They both have general information about the show, interviews with the producers and others, a list of frequently asked questions, and pointers to some newspaper articles about the show. There is also a page devoted to Teletubbies on Parenthood Web: http://www.parenthoodweb.com There are hundreds of other web pages having to do with Teletubbies, but most of them are trying to sell products or talking about Tinky-Winky's sexual orientation. These three were the most helpful I found (though I only looked at about 50 of the pages that looked most promising from the information on AltaVista). EH-OH vs. UH-OH Several people mentioned the TT's pronunciation of eh-oh and uh-oh. The concensus, with which I agree, is that there are two distinct forms - "eh-oh" meaning "hello", and "uh-oh" meaning "oops" or something similar. I agree with people that these are sometimes difficult to distinguish. Apparently the French version also uses "eh-oh" rather than a form of "bonjour". TELETUBBY PHONOLOGY Shelley Velleman's student Sarah Schmit has written a paper about the phonology of the Teletubbies. She claims that while much of the phonology is similar to that found in child language, some is more advanced than would be seen in children of the target age for this show (e.g. accuracy of consonant clusters), and some is unlike typical child phonology (e.g. odd substitutions for liquids). Miriam Coimbra writes that Teletubby phonology in Brazilian Portuguese is more like that of 3-4-year-olds than that of younger children, that it shows some aspects that are more advanced than would be expected (e.g. consonant clusters), and does not seem to show the deviances Schmit finds in English. IS THIS LANGUAGE HARMFUL TO CHILD LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT? Most respondents - including mothers and child language experts - agreed that the Teletubby language will probably not have a negative effect on children's language learnng. Alison Henry mentioned that one of her students did a project on the Teletubbies arguing that the language was very like that of children who would be the age of younger siblings of the viewers, and therefore had no more impact on acquisition than hearing younger children speaking. Mabel Rice provided some very helpful references to work on language in Sesame Street, which showed that the language used in SS had a facilitative effect on child language learning, with specific mention of vocabulary development. She also noted her observations about TT based on the shows she reviewed for PBS. Cliff Pye also mentioned that there has been quite a lot of research on the language effects of Seseme Street, including work by John Wright and Aletha Houston. Lynn Santelmann noted a paper on the effects of language in the Barney show in a recent cognitive or developmental psychology journal. She notes that the article claimed that the repitition and other features of language used on Barney were beneficial to children's language development (or at least the group who watched Barney episodes did somewhat better on their language measures than those that didn't). I haven't yet been able to locate this article. Lois Bloom provided a summary of her comments on TT for ABC News. Jean Berko Gleason and Paula Menyuk provided a copy of a Boston Globe article on TT for which they and Steven Pinker were interviewed. It is appended below. Many linguist parents remarked how much their children enjoyed watching TT. Dominic Watt noted that using TT pictures and dolls as an elicitation tool has been very helpful in his experiments on child phonology, since children love to talk about the Teletubbies. Julie Watt suggested contacting David Buckingham who does much work on children and British TV. She notes that he is Reader in Education at the Institute of Education or may be contacted through the British Film Institute. Thanks once again for everyone who took the time to respond to my question. The responses will be very helpful in providing material for my class debate. Best, Shanley Allen. ************************************************************************ BOSTON GLOBE ARTICLE Copyright 1998 Globe Newspaper Company The Boston Globe April 5, 1998, Sunday, City Edition SECTION: FOCUS; Pg. D5 HEADLINE: 'Teletubbies' need no translation; THE WORD / JAN FREEMAN BYLINE: By Jan Freeman, Globe Staff BODY: Tomorrow is "Teletubbies" time in American living rooms, as the hit kiddie show arrives, trailing clouds of linguistic controversy, from its native England. The Teletubbies themselves, four roly-poly toddler characters played by adults in pastel Dr. Dentons, look harmless enough, despite their alien-style antennas. But they caused a furor in Britain by speaking more or less genuine toddler talk - cooter for scooter, tustard for custard, eh-oh for hello, wabbit for rabbit. ("Teletubbies" itself is pronounced telly-tubbies, a play on the British slang for television; the characters' tubby tummies are equipped with little telly screens.) Because the show is aimed at children as young as 12 to 18 months, some parents were horrified by the Teletubbies' toddlerese. In response to their distress, the baby talk was toned down last summer; and in the PBS broadcasts, tubby talk will have an American accent. But American parents, too, are sure to be wondering: Should characters created for kids who are just mastering language be allowed to use baby talk? It's a concern Robert Conway of Belmont raised earlier this year when he wrote to ask why Cookie Monster is allowed to inflict his ungrammatical "Me want cookie!" on the ears of babes. An educational program like "Sesame Street," he thought, should set a good example by hewing to standard grammar. But psychologists who study language acquisition say parents can relax: Baby talk is universal, baby talk is useful, and there's no reason to think hearing it on television will impede a child's language learning. "Children learn early on that different people talk in different ways," says Jean Berko Gleason, a professor of psychology at Boston University. "It is OK for them to hear Cookie Monster say 'Me want cookie.' That's how Cookie Monster talks." Baby talk won't get in the way as long as children also hear "a good deal of language that is appropriate to their age and stage," says Gleason. Her BU colleague Paula Menyuk agrees: "There is no evidence . . . that caregivers who use baby talk more have infants who are retarded in their language development." Steven Pinker of MIT, author of "The Language Instinct," is even more vehement: "The chance of kids' language being corrupted by the loathsome Teletubbies is nil," he says. Children not only can recognize baby talk, they are generally "pretty good at segregating language input by speaker and compartmentalizing the different varieties." In other words, babies are smarter than we think about language; they know that "tubby talk" and Cookie Monsterese are not the languages grown-ups speak. Today's small "Teletubbies" fans will not go off to college saying wabbit, any more than their Looney Tuned-in parents did. A few child-rearing authorities still dislike baby talk, mainly on aesthetic grounds, it seems, but their numbers are dwindling as science topples their prejudices. A study published last year, for instance, found that mothers speaking unrelated languages produced the same kind of baby talk when speaking to their infants, exaggerating certain vowel sounds to give them extra clarity. And far from discouraging baby talk, one popular child-rearing book gives detailed instructions on doing it, and cautions parents not to let self-consciousness stop them from babbling and cooing. Better too much coochy-coochy-coo, it seems, than not enough. If parents still want to worry about the Teletubbies invasion, the British experience suggests it's the older children they should keep an eye on. "Teletubbies" is a trippy sort of show, and young ravers have allegedly been coming home >from their all-night parties to groove on its psychedelically absurdist landscape. Despite the BBC's ban on reproducing copyrighted images or sound, the World Wide Web is dense with fan sites for decoding Tubbies arcana and debating " 'Teletubbies': Dangerous subversives or harmless drivel?" For babies and toddlers, the most dangerous thing about the program is probably sitting around watching it. Last month, yet another study linked obesity in children with the amount of TV they watch; America seems to be producing enough home-grown teletubbies without the encouragement of the brand-name British imports. What's the word? Write or e-mail yours to Jan Freeman at The Boston Globe, PO Box 2378, Boston, MA 02107-2378; freeman(at sign)globe.com. Please include a hometown and phone number. ************************************************************************ ***************************************************** Shanley E. M. Allen, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Boston University Graduate Program in Applied Linguistics Developmental Studies Department, School of Education 605 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA, 02215, U.S.A. phone: +1-617-358-0354 fax: +1-617-353-3924 e-mail: shanley at bu.edu ***************************************************** From snehab at utdallas.edu Fri May 28 22:09:17 1999 From: snehab at utdallas.edu (Sneha V Bharadwaj) Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 17:09:17 -0500 Subject: Sp. ed. schools Message-ID: Dear members, I know of a 4-yr old boy (adopted from Romania when he was 2 yrs old). He needs a lot of work in the area of language, especially phonology. His parents are moving to New York. It would be really helpful if anyone of you could recommend a special school for this boy. Thanks in advance to all your replies. -SB From dmolfese at som.siu.edu Mon May 3 14:33:02 1999 From: dmolfese at som.siu.edu (Dennis L. Molfese) Date: Mon, 3 May 1999 09:33:02 -0500 Subject: postdoc position in Language and Brain Message-ID: Postdoctoral position in Language and Brain. I can support a postdoctoral position for two years beginning this summer on July 1. I am looking for someone with strong graduate training in early language development. The training I will provide will focus on the electrophysiological correlates of early language development (speech perception, word and sentence development) using several 128 electrode array Geo-net systems with children ranging in age from neonates to preschoolers. One system will be set up in a local hospital to allow us to study longitudinally identical and fraternal twins, while another will be based in my University of Louisville lab to test older infants and children. No prior electrophysiological experience or familiarity with that literature is necessary (although always welcome). Training will involve emersion in that literature, grant and manuscript writing, in-depth training in hardware and theory, and relevant statistical data treatments, as well as in the neuropsychology of language. At the end of this postdoc training period, it is my expectation that the student will be able to set up and operate a state of the art language centered neuroelectrophysiology lab. If you are interested or know of someone who might be interested, please ask them to contact me at their earliest convenience. Applicants should send to me their letter of interest in which they outline their relevant background, a vita, and two letters of recommendation. Thanks, Dennis Molfese Dennis L. Molfese, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Physiology, Pediatrics, Psychiatry, and Behavioral & Social Sciences Chair, Behavioral & Social Sciences School of Medicine Southern Illinois University Carbondale, IL 62901-6502 618/453-3521 dmolfese at som.siu.edu Beginning July 1, 1999: Dennis L. Molfese, Ph.D. Chair and Professor Distinguished University Scholar Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences University of Louisville 317 Life Sciences Building Belknap Campus Louisville, KY 40292-0001 502/852-6775 or 502/852-8274 From rosangela.gabriel at psy.ox.ac.uk Tue May 4 11:28:14 1999 From: rosangela.gabriel at psy.ox.ac.uk (Rosangele Gabriel ( Kim Plunkett RSA)) Date: Tue, 4 May 1999 11:28:14 GMT Subject: POSTS Message-ID: Dear Sir/Madam, I'm working with Dr Kim Plunkett in the Department of Experimental Psychology - Oxford University - and I would like to know if the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory had been used to collect data from Brazilian Portuguese children's vocabulary. If yes, how can I have access to the data? Yours sincerely, Rosangela Gabriel _________________ Rosangela Gabriel Department of Experimental Psychology South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3UD - UK Phone +44 01865 271400 (work) +44 01865 453380 (home) Rosangela.Gabriel at psy.ox.ac.uk _________________ Rosangela Gabriel Department of Experimental Psychology South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3UD - UK Phone +44 01865 271400 (work) +44 01865 453380 (home) Rosangela.Gabriel at psy.ox.ac.uk From santelmannl at pdx.edu Mon May 3 16:45:44 1999 From: santelmannl at pdx.edu (Lynn Santelmann) Date: Mon, 3 May 1999 09:45:44 -0700 Subject: Human Subjects Review and Maintaince of Audio/Video Tapes Message-ID: I have recently applied for human subjects review at Portland State University and was surprised to receive a query from the committee as to "how long will the videos and records be stored and how and when will they be destroyed?" I had carefully explained in my application that any publications of results or transcripts would use only code names, so as to protect the privacy of the participants, and that the audio and video tapes were to be kept in locked cabinets in my office/lab. To be honest, I hadn't considered destroying the original tapes, and I don't want to be required to do so. I have often found it necessary to go back to the original tapes to clarify issues that come up later, or to answer questions that arise later (such as might stem from peer review). This certainly touches on the issues of privacy and confidentiality that were discussed on this list recently, but at the same time, I find this request to be excessive, especially since I am not proposing to make the recordings public, except through transcripts. My questions for the community are: 1. Has anyone else run up against this kind of request to destroy the original tapes? 2. Any suggestions on how to respond to this committee? Thanks for the help, Sincerely, Lynn Santelmann ****************************************************** Lynn Santelmann, Assistant Professor Department of Applied Linguistics Portland State University 467 Neuberger Hall 724 SW Harrison Ave. Portland, OR 97201 Phone: (503) 725-4140 Fax: (503) 725-4139 e-mail: santelmannl at pdx.edu ****************************************************** From jeff at elda.fr Tue May 4 18:29:12 1999 From: jeff at elda.fr (Jeff ALLEN) Date: Tue, 4 May 1999 20:29:12 +0200 Subject: Human Subjects Review and Maintaince of Audio/Video Tapes Message-ID: At 09:45 03/05/99 -0700, Lynn Santelmann wrote: >I have recently applied for human subjects review at Portland State >University Yes, Applied Ling dept, up one level and down the hall from Modern Languages in Neuberger Hall. I did my BA in French and MA in TESOL/App Ling there. I've heard a few stories about the Human Subjects review committee being quite difficult at PSU. You are not the first one from there to complain. I finished my graduate work there nearly 10 years ago and remember comments from grad student union meetings, etc. about dealing with Human Subjects Review. Granted, it is a safety factor for the subjects themselves, but when it starts squelching valid research, that is not good. > and was surprised to receive a query from the committee as to >"how long will the videos and records be stored and how and when will they >be destroyed?" > >I had carefully explained in my application that any publications of >results or transcripts would use only code names, so as to protect the >privacy of the participants, and that the audio and video tapes were to be >kept in locked cabinets in my office/lab. Watch out with such conditions. In my data collection efforts of very precious and hard-to-come-by data (recorded data of 150 Haitian Creole speakers and of 300 Korean speakers for speech recognition systems), I have always kept the digitally recorded data on one hard disk, with daily back-ups on 8mm tape (back-ups done overnight). I take one 8mm tape home each day, alternating the tapes each day so that the one in my briefcase is yesterday's back-up material. 8mm tapes are good for sound files since you can store 2- 5 Gb of data on them, maybe more now. Then you burn CDroms every so often as additional back ups. Granted, you are dealing with video tapes, which are also subject to breaking, stretching, cracking, etc. Multiples copies are necessary for avoiding a major disaster to your data if Neuberger Hall unfortunately goes up in smoke. >To be honest, I hadn't considered >destroying the original tapes, Either would I. I still have all of the audio taped conversations of the interviews for my doctoral work. it is the only proof for verifying data. Once the tapes/data are gone, there is no way that you or anyone else can check your work, from a scientific standpoint. >and I don't want to be required to do so. I >have often found it necessary to go back to the original tapes to clarify >issues that come up later, or to answer questions that arise later (such as >might stem from peer review). Exactly. >This certainly touches on the issues of privacy and confidentiality that >were discussed on this list recently, An interesting thread on "anonymity" in corpora studies and the anonymisation of data appeared on the Corpora List recently. I have the whole thread of messages if you are interested. I also know different folks working in corpus linguistics who specifically deal with this issue all the time for the use of medical records and police records. I can refer you to them for how they have dealt with this in project proposals for universities and govt-funded research grants. >but at the same time, I find this >request to be excessive, especially since I am not proposing to make the >recordings public, except through transcripts. > >My questions for the community are: >1. Has anyone else run up against this kind of request to destroy the >original tapes? >2. Any suggestions on how to respond to this committee? Yes, The data is for research purposes only. There is no intent for public or research dissemination (although you might want to be careful not getting yourself to stuck with this). State it so that you will not disseminate/distribute the data without prior consent of the subjects, and that non-disclosure statements would be signed by any parties that receive the data. Also carefully state that in the published results, you will follow existing criteria for anonymisation. The thread of messages on this topic from Corpora will point you to more experts in this field. State that if there is any need for external intervention of other experts with regard to this data, you will require them to sign a non-disclosure statement. It would help to have an example of it for the HSR committee to look over as an accompanying annex to your reply. Lastly, destroying the original data, including copies, is removing all potential data for any scientific benchmarking, verification, and validation issues. Any comments from other people on the list? Jeff ================================================= Jeff ALLEN - Directeur Technique European Language Resources Association (ELRA) & European Language resources Distribution Agency (ELDA) (Agence Europ?enne de Distribution des Ressources Linguistiques) 55, rue Brillat-Savarin 75013 Paris FRANCE Tel: (+33) 1.43.13.33.33 - Fax: (+33) 1.43.13.33.30 mailto:jeff at elda.fr http://www.icp.grenet.fr/ELRA/home.html From asheldon at maroon.tc.umn.edu Tue May 4 20:50:24 1999 From: asheldon at maroon.tc.umn.edu (Amy L Sheldon) Date: Tue, 4 May 1999 15:50:24 -0500 Subject: Human Subjects Review and Maintaince of Audio/Video Tapes Message-ID: I think this is a standard query, but I've not run into any requirement that primary records be disposed of by a certain date. It is reasonable to say - materials to be held until no longer deemed necessary for research, or something like this. On Mon, 3 May 1999, Lynn Santelmann wrote: > I have recently applied for human subjects review at Portland State > University and was surprised to receive a query from the committee as to > "how long will the videos and records be stored and how and when will they > be destroyed?" > > kept in locked cabinets in my office/lab. To be honest, I hadn't considered > destroying the original tapes, and I don't want to be required to do so. I > request to be excessive, especially since I am not proposing to make the are they requesting that you dispose of the recordings? I don't read the quote above as saying that necessarily. Amy Sheldon From santell at nh1.nh.pdx.edu Tue May 4 23:58:06 1999 From: santell at nh1.nh.pdx.edu (Lynn Santelmann) Date: Tue, 4 May 1999 15:58:06 PST Subject: Sum: Subject: Re: Human Subjects and Maintaince of Audi Message-ID: Thank you to all who replied so quickly to my query concerning my human subjects committee's question about "destroying" records, especially thanks to those who have recently served on human subjects review committees and so could explain where this request comes from. It seems that this question about destroying data comes from one of the U.S. federal agency questionaires (NIH?). I probably over-reacted to the question -- it wasn't given as a requirement that data be destroyed, simply as a suggestion or even question about whether it would be. All of the respondents were of the opinion that it is not necessary to agree to destroy the data. A fair number of replies pointed out the value of maintaining data archivally so that it can be used for scientific verfication. In terms how to respond, a number of people suggested that I simply say that I plan to keep these data for archival purposes (or variations on this theme, e.g., after coding and ALL analysis or "until the materials are no longer deemed necessary for research") Most people who had served on human subjects committees said that if the information about archiving and the potential use of tapes for future studies is included in the informed consent, then there should be no issue with keeping the data indefinitely. These are definitely good ideas and something that I had omitted in my original consent form. I have spoken with my administrators about this, and it appears that simply defending the need to archive data and making it explicit in the consent form will suffice. One final note: Jeff Allen pointed out to me that it pays to be cautious when detailing HOW data will be securely stored. If you state that it is going to be stored in a locked cabinet in your office, then technically, this prevents you from making back-ups and storing them at home in case of fire. Saying that the tapes will be stored in "a secure location" is probably better. Thanks to: Jeff Allen Terry Au Angeline Lillard Brian MacWhinney Liz Bates Margot Kinberg Lynne Hewitt Amy L Sheldon Margaret Friend John Limber C. Melanie Schuele (apologies to anyone I missed) Best, Lynn Santelmann ________________________________________________________ Lynn Santelmann, Assistant Professor Department of Applied Linguistics Portland State University P.O. Box 751 Portland, OR 92707-0751 Phone: (503) 725-4140 Fax: (503) 725-4139 E-mail: santelmannl at pdx.edu ________________________________________________________ From ann.dowker at psy.ox.ac.uk Wed May 5 19:46:16 1999 From: ann.dowker at psy.ox.ac.uk (Ann Dowker) Date: Wed, 5 May 1999 20:46:16 +0100 Subject: sign language development database? Message-ID: I read somewhere (I think in one of Ursula Bellugi's papers) that there is a database of children's early ASL use. Is this the case? If so, where is it and how does one gain access to it? Yours, Ann Dowker From RCDUBE at IDIRECT.COM Thu May 6 18:47:41 1999 From: RCDUBE at IDIRECT.COM (Rita Vis Dubé) Date: Thu, 6 May 1999 14:47:41 -0400 Subject: ASL Transcription Message-ID: I am interested in finding out if there are any guidelines/criteria for reliability for transcription for American Sign Language (ASL). I have used the transcription coding system described by Baker & Cokely (American Sign Language: A Teacher's Resource Text on Grammar and Culture, 1980). I would like to find out if anyone has come across or has developed a set of guidelines for interrater reliability. Sincerely, Rita Vis Dube Doctoral Candidate Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine University of Alberta Edmonton, AB From m.barrett at surrey.ac.uk Fri May 7 13:00:30 1999 From: m.barrett at surrey.ac.uk (Martyn Barrett) Date: Fri, 7 May 1999 13:00:30 GMT Subject: book announcement Message-ID: NEW BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT **************************** The following book, which may be of particular interest to info-childes readers, has just been published: M. Barrett (ed.) (1999), The Development of Language. Hove, UK: Psychology Press. ISBN 0-86377-846-1. 416 pp. Hardback. 39.95 Pounds Sterling. The contents of the book are as follows: CHAPTER 1: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NATURE OF LANGUAGE AND TO THE CENTRAL THEMES AND ISSUES IN THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT, by Martyn Barrett The nature of language The task facing the language-learning child The topics covered by the chapters in this book Recurrent themes and issues in the study of children's language development References CHAPTER 2: PRELINGUISTIC COMMUNICATION, by Vasudevi Reddy How do we look for the prelinguistic? Intentionality in communication Reasons for the emergence of communication Continuities in communicative development Embodiment in communication Landmarks in the changing nature of prelinguistic communication Understanding prelinguistic communication: continuity and embodiment References CHAPTER 3: EARLY SPEECH PERCEPTION AND WORD LEARNING, by Kim Plunkett and Graham Schafer Introduction Early speech perception Word detection Word learning Summary References CHAPTER 4: PHONOLOGICAL ACQUISITION, by David Ingram Introduction A phonological case study: the data Theoretical issues Phonological analysis Summary References CHAPTER 5: EARLY LEXICAL DEVELOPMENT, by Esther Dromi Introduction The size of the one-word lexicon and the rate of accumulating new words The distribution of early words in various word-classes The content of early words Semantic processes in the acquisition of early word meanings The role of context and experience in the acquisition of word meanings Theoretical models on word meaning acquisition Epilogue References CHAPTER 6: THE WORLD OF WORDS: THOUGHTS ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF A LEXICON, by Stan A. Kuczaj II The word as unit What's in a word? The representation of meaning Reference Denotation Are object words basic? The denotation of early object words The problem of too many possibilities Is children's acquisition of word meaning constrained? Constraints for word meaning acquisition? What counts as a constraint? Are constraints necessary for word meaning acquisition? The acquisition of paradigmatic relations Syntagmatic relations The interaction of language and cognitive development Conclusions References CHAPTER 7: EARLY SYNTACTIC DEVELOPMENT: A CONSTRUCTION GRAMMAR APPROACH, by Michael Tomasello and Patricia J. Brooks Major steps in early syntactic development Processes of development Conclusion References CHAPTER 8: SOME ASPECTS OF INNATENESS AND COMPLEXITY IN GRAMMATICAL ACQUISITION, by Michael Maratsos Introduction: some basic ideas about complexity, innateness, and heterogeneity Thematic relation mapping in English and other languages: massive complexity in some systems Formal categories: some developmental issues Chomskyan acquisitions: formal and abstruse properties of grammar Some general conclusions about complex grammatical acquisition References CHAPTER 9: THE DEVELOPMENT OF CONVERSATIONAL AND DISCOURSE SKILLS, by Barbara A. Pan and Catherine E. Snow Development of conversational skills Development of discourse skills Conclusion References CHAPTER 10: BILINGUAL LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT, by Suzanne Romaine Introduction Types of childhood bilingualism Theoretical issues in childhood bilingualism Input and social context as factors affecting rate and order of acquisition Is there cognitive advantage to bilingualism? References CHAPTER 11: SIGN LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT, by John D. Bonvillian Introduction Early sign language acquisition: similarities and differences with spoken language development Hand preference in early signing The development of gestural communication in the absence of a language model The emergence of a new sign language Is there a critical period for sign language acquisition? Sign communication training for mute, low-functioning children Concluding remarks References CHAPTER 12: LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT IN ATYPICAL CHILDREN, by Helen Tager-Flusberg Introduction Down Syndrome Williams Syndrome Autism Other atypical populations Conclusions References CHAPTER 13: SPECIFIC LANGUAGE IMPAIRMENT, by Paul Fletcher Introduction Subject description The LAD deficit hypothesis SLI in other languages How specific is specific language impairment? Residual issues Conclusion References CHAPTER 14: TOWARDS A BIOLOGICAL SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT, by John Locke Introduction Explaining language development Ontogenetic phases A proposed goal-directed model Concluding remarks References ****************************** Professor Martyn Barrett Department of Psychology University of Surrey Guildford Surrey GU2 5XH UK Tel: (01483) 876862 Fax: (01483) 259553 Email: m.barrett at surrey.ac.uk ****************************** From m.barrett at surrey.ac.uk Fri May 7 17:40:17 1999 From: m.barrett at surrey.ac.uk (Martyn Barrett) Date: Fri, 7 May 1999 17:40:17 GMT Subject: The Development of Language Message-ID: I've received a number of email enquiries asking how people can order a copy of The Development of Language. Probably the simplest method would be by email to the following address: book.orders at tandf.co.uk Hope this helps! Martyn Barrett ****************************** Professor Martyn Barrett Department of Psychology University of Surrey Guildford Surrey GU2 5XH UK Tel: (01483) 876862 Fax: (01483) 259553 Email: m.barrett at surrey.ac.uk ****************************** From edwards.212 at osu.edu Sat May 8 17:06:11 1999 From: edwards.212 at osu.edu (Jan Edwards) Date: Sat, 8 May 1999 12:06:11 -0500 Subject: noise-free audio recordings Message-ID: I'm wondering if anyone can help with a problem that we are having. We are recording young children (3 to 5 year olds) onto audiotape in order to do acoustic analyses (spectral moments analysis and formant tracking). We need recordings with a very good signal-to-noise ratio (preferably at least 40 dB) for our purposes. Some built-in limitations: 1. We are recording children at several different sites in a "quiet" classroom -- we can't use a soundproof booth since the kids are not coming to us. Therefore, we always have some ambient noise. 2. We need to use a laptop computer since we are going to several different sites. The sound chips in the laptops are not of the highest quality. 3. Because we are recording such young children, we need to use a head-mounted microphone to maintain a fairly standard mouth-to-microphone distance. This limits our choice of microphone options. We have tried two different procedures: 1. Recording directly onto the computer. This method works great in our laboratory with a high-quality sound board. It doesn't work with the laptop -- too much noise inherent in the poor-quality sound chips that are built into the laptop. 2. Recording with a Shure head-mounted microphone, a preamp (made by our technician), and a SONY portable digital audio tape recorder. These recordings also have been noisy. Has anyone else had better luck making recordings under similar conditions? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Jan Edwards From macw at cmu.edu Sun May 9 16:33:20 1999 From: macw at cmu.edu (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Sun, 9 May 1999 12:33:20 -0400 Subject: noise-free audio recordings Message-ID: Jan, My approach in these circumstances would be to record the children using either a DAT recorder, a Sony Professional Walkman, or the Marantz equivalent and do the digitization later using a full lab set-up. However, you say that you have done something like this and that the recording are noisy. If so, you have to consider what might be causing the noise. One source is use of the wrong mike set-up. A head-mounted mike could be causing rubbing and vibration. A better bet might be an omnidirectional mike on a stand placed on a pillow in a place near the children, but not subject to bumping. Try recording yourselves rather than children in these same circumstances. If you still have noise, maybe it is ambient noise or a problem with your taperecorder. If you want the absolute best quality, maybe you need to shift to DAT. --Brian MacWhinney From macw at cmu.edu Tue May 11 20:14:55 1999 From: macw at cmu.edu (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Tue, 11 May 1999 16:14:55 -0400 Subject: CHILDES/BIB Message-ID: Dear Info-CHILDES, I'm afraid the machine that was serving the CHILDES/BIB had a hardware failure. Hopefully the bibliography will be accessible again at a new address by about Friday. --Brian MacWhinney From aad784 at agora.ulaval.ca Tue May 11 21:07:58 1999 From: aad784 at agora.ulaval.ca (Antonella Conte) Date: Tue, 11 May 1999 17:07:58 -0400 Subject: mlu info Message-ID: Hi there everyone, Way back on March 31st of this year, it was mentioned that there was a CHILDES/BIB where one could find information on "mean length of utterance". I have tried to access this site (http://alaska.psy.cmu.edu) on the net, but to no avail. Is it possible that the server is always tied up? Another question if I may: The unit of measurement for mlu is "morpheme/utterance". What is the exact definition of "morpheme" ? Is an "utterance" equal to a new tier for a particular speaker? Antonella Conte From aad784 at agora.ulaval.ca Tue May 11 21:15:54 1999 From: aad784 at agora.ulaval.ca (Antonella Conte) Date: Tue, 11 May 1999 17:15:54 -0400 Subject: size of data Message-ID: Dear all, I have quite a big corpus to analyse and have chosen to do so using CHILDES. However, I was wondering if the system is big enough to handle about 1500 pages of transcribed and typed data. Has anyone done so before? If so, with how much data (if you don't mind me asking)? If not, is there a maximum number of transcribed pages? Experimenting with the system, I have been able to analyse my sittings on an individual basis but would like to amalgamate them (i.e. sitting one + sitting two, sitting 1+2+3, sitting 1+2+3+4,...). In doing so, I know that my stats will change. What I am afraid of though, is that the system will crash on me. I'm hoping that someone could provide me with some advice to avoid this perdicament. Thanks for your reply, Antonella Conte From macw at cmu.edu Tue May 11 21:47:32 1999 From: macw at cmu.edu (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Tue, 11 May 1999 17:47:32 -0400 Subject: big corpora Message-ID: Dear Antonella, I use CHILDES frequently to run what we call "mega-freqs" on far more than 1500 pages of data. I don't think you will have trouble with running on a corpus of that size. I am assuming that you will break your transcript up into files corresponding to individual sessions, right? To analyze sittings together, as you wish, you just use wildcards, as in freq *.cha One way of testing all this would be to download a huge corpus, such as the Brown or Hall corpora and run your commands there to see if having lots of data can somehow "break" the programs. I doubt that it will. If you have other technical questions about the detailed running of CHAT commands or the editor, let's move the discussion over to the other mailing list at info-chibolts at childes.psy.cmu.edu. Good luck. --Brian MacWhinney From ditza at correo.uniovi.es Wed May 12 18:44:16 1999 From: ditza at correo.uniovi.es (Eliseo Diez-Itza) Date: Wed, 12 May 1999 13:44:16 -0500 Subject: big corpora Message-ID: -- [ From: Eliseo Diez-Itza * EMC.Ver #2.5.02 ] -- If you run >freq *.cha , you get as output: freq 1.cha + freq 2.cha, Is it possible to get as output: freq (1.cha + 2.cha) without pasting previously the transcripts? Eliseo Diez-Itza Universidad de Oviedo From m.deuchar at bangor.ac.uk Wed May 12 15:46:36 1999 From: m.deuchar at bangor.ac.uk (Margaret Deuchar) Date: Wed, 12 May 1999 16:46:36 +0100 Subject: Posts in Linguistics at University of Wales, Bangor Message-ID: Applications are invited for posts as described below. The research interests of applicants can be in any area of linguistics including child language and psycholinguistics. SCHOOL OF ENGLISH AND LINGUISTICS, UNIVERSITY OF WALES, BANGOR Department of Linguistics Applications are invited for two lectureships in Linguistics, tenable from 1st September 1999 or as soon as possible thereafter. The people appointed will be expected to play a key role in the development of our new BA in English Language. Applicants should have a PhD and a strong record in teaching and research relative to their age and experience. The appointments will be on the Lecturer Scale A: ?16655-21815 Application forms and further particulars can be obtained from Personnel Services, University of Wales, Bangor, Gwynedd, LL57 2DG, U.K. Tel. (01248) 382926. Email: pos020 at bangor.ac.uk Informal enquiries can be made by contacting Professor Jenny Thomas, Linguistics Department, University of Wales, Bangor, Gwynedd, LL57 2DG. Tel. (44) (01248) 382270. Email: jenny.thomas at bangor.ac.uk Please quote reference number 99/56 when applying. Closing date for applications: 14 June 1999 SCHOOL OF ENGLISH AND LINGUISTICS Department of Linguistics FURTHER PARTICULARS Applications are invited for two lectureships in Linguistics, tenable from 1st September 1999 or as soon as possible thereafter. One post may be for a three-year fixed term in the first instance. The people appointed will be expected to play a key role in the development of our new BA in English Language. Applications are welcome from well qualified individuals with research interests within any area of Linguistics, but the people appointed will be required to offer courses in two or more of the following areas: English grammar, variation in English, the history of English, language and the media, stylistics, corpus linguistics, language in education, English language teaching, psycholinguistics. Applicants should have completed their PhD (or equivalent) and have a strong record of research and publication relative to their age and experience. They should also have a record of effective teaching at University level (the person appointed may be required to follow UWB's highly regarded Certificate in Teaching in Higher Education, if appropriate). The appointments will be on the Lecturer Scale A: ?16655-21815 Informal enquiries can be made by contacting Professor Jenny Thomas, Linguistics Department, University of Wales, Bangor, Gwynedd, LL57 2DG. Tel. (01248) 382270. Email: Jenny.Thomas at Bangor.ac.uk Shortlisted candidates will be invited to Bangor for interview 20th and 21st July 1999 and will be asked to give a 20-minute presentation on a topic of their choice (this should relate to proposed or current research). Candidates will also be asked to discuss the contributions they could make to the teaching in the Department. Please send a completed Application Form, CV and Teaching Profile to: Personnel Services, University of Wales, Bangor, Gwynedd, LL57 2DG. Tel. (01248) 382926. Email: pos020 at bangor.ac.uk. Please include the names and addresses of 3 referees including , if possible, email addresses, fax and telephone numbers. Please note that candidates who are shortlisted will be asked to submit copies of any publications they have listed as `forthcoming' or `in press'. Please quote reference number 99/56 when applying. The closing date for applications is 14 June 1999. Visit our Web Pages: http://www/linguistics.bangor.ac.uk/ `Person Profile' The person appointed will have: a PhD (or equivalent) in linguistics or a related field; a strong record of research and publications relative to age and experience; experience and competence in university teaching, and the ability to relate well to students new to the field; a commitment to the pastoral care of students; competence in administration; willingness to play a full part in the life of the Department. SCHOOL OF ENGLISH AND LINGUISTICS Department of Linguistics About the Department The Linguistics department is one of the oldest in the UK, and the only one in Wales. It was established in 1960 and became part of the School of English and Linguistics in 1989. The Professor of English, Professor Tom Corns, is currently Head of the School. The department has an established staff of seven, including two Professors and three Senior Lecturers. There is one Graduate Assistant and several part time Tutorial Assistants. In addition, Professor David Crystal holds the position of Honorary Professorial Fellow, and Professor Alan Thomas the position of Research Professor. The department currently offers BAs in Linguistics and Linguistics with English Language and an MA in Linguistics. The latter is part of a recently introduced Ph.D. Programme. From 2000 we shall be introducing two new degree schemes, English Language and English Language and Literature (the latter will be taught jointly with the Literature Department). The department has some outstanding Ph.D. students who regularly present papers at national and international meetings. The department offers a broad range of undergraduate courses, which seek to accommodate the interests of a diverse body of students, and offers Ph.D. supervision in most areas of linguistics. The department is an important centre for linguistic research, particularly in the areas of syntax, language acquisition and pragmatics. In the last UFC Research Assessment Exercise, it received a rating of 3A. It is important to us to improve on this rating, and to this end we aim to keep teaching commitments below 90 hours per year for all staff who are research active. Members of the department have organized some seven international conferences since 1992, which have brought numerous distinguished linguists to Bangor, and a weekly research seminar has welcomed speakers from many UK and European universities as well as the United States. Members of the department are also involved in interdisciplinary research, especially with members of the Psychology department, with whom a Bangor Centre for Psycholinguistics has recently been established. From clal-mailbox at cornell.edu Thu May 13 21:59:09 1999 From: clal-mailbox at cornell.edu (Cornell Language Acquisition Laboratory) Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 17:59:09 -0400 Subject: Spanish Flip Verbs Message-ID: Does anyone know of any references of the L1 acquisition of "Flip" verbs (such as "gustar") in Spanish or any other language that has similar verb forms? Many thanks, Jennifer Austin & Maria Blume, Cornell University. ==================================== | Cornell Language Acquisition Lab | | NG29, Martha van Rensselaer Hall | | Cornell University | | Ithaca, NY | | 14853 | | (607) 255-8090 | | clal at cornell.edu | ==================================== From labraham at unm.edu Fri May 14 14:47:56 1999 From: labraham at unm.edu (Lee Abraham) Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 08:47:56 -0600 Subject: No subject Message-ID: Set nomail From macw at cmu.edu Fri May 14 15:04:49 1999 From: macw at cmu.edu (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 11:04:49 -0400 Subject: big corpora Message-ID: Dear Eliseo, I am guessing that you want: freq +u *.cha This treats all of your many files as if they were one huge file and produces a single file of FREQ output. --Brian P.S. Please feel free to post questions about the use of CLAN programs to info-chibolts at childes.psy.cmu.edu --On Wed, May 12, 1999 1:44 PM -0500 Eliseo Diez-Itza wrote: > -- [ From: Eliseo Diez-Itza * EMC.Ver #2.5.02 ] -- > > If you run >freq *.cha , you get as output: freq 1.cha + freq > 2.cha, Is it possible to get as output: freq (1.cha + 2.cha) without > pasting previously the transcripts? > > Eliseo Diez-Itza > Universidad de Oviedo > From roma at telebot.com Mon May 17 01:41:25 1999 From: roma at telebot.com (Roma Horbatsch) Date: Sun, 16 May 1999 21:41:25 -0400 Subject: IASCL Congress Message-ID: To IASCL Congress Participants travelling from BILBAO to San Sebastian !!! I will be in Bilbao on Sunday July 11th. If you would like to share a Taxi or travel by bus to San Sebastian please let me know. Roma Chumak-Horbatsch From cec at cwcom.net Mon May 17 12:01:46 1999 From: cec at cwcom.net (Cecile De Cat) Date: Mon, 17 May 1999 13:01:46 +0100 Subject: dislocations and other peripheral elements in child language Message-ID: Dear InfoChildes I am writing to ask if anyone knows of studies of dislocations and other peripheral elements in child language. By this, I mean any type of selected or unselected argument that appears outside of the "core of the sentence", typically with a dislocation intonation. The two examples below are from adult French. The peripheral elements are capitalised (capitals not being used here to indicate focus). (1) elle est folle, CETTE FILLE she is mad, this girl (2) MOI, LES HISTOIRES, j'aime bien me the stories I like well A while back, there was a message from Lawrence Cheung on the Linguist List, inquiring about languages with right-dislocations. This is, in part, what I am interested in, but in the field of child language, and in both directions (left and right). Thanks a lot for your help Cecile De Cat University of York From slobin at cogsci.Berkeley.EDU Mon May 17 17:25:40 1999 From: slobin at cogsci.Berkeley.EDU (Dan I. SLOBIN) Date: Mon, 17 May 1999 10:25:40 -0700 Subject: dislocations and other peripheral elements in child language Message-ID: Right dislocations are common in Turkish, which is an SOV language. Continuing information (given, topic, etc.) appears post-verbally; the immediate pre-verbal slot is for focus. These word-order patterns are used in pragmatically appropriate fashion from the beginning of multiword utterances in Turkish. There are a number of papers on this issue in Turkish child language, as well as sections of several doctoral dissertations. -Dan Slobin Psych, Univ of Calif, Berkeley On Mon, 17 May 1999, Cecile De Cat wrote: > Dear InfoChildes > > I am writing to ask if anyone knows of studies of dislocations and other peripheral elements in child language. By this, I mean any type of selected or unselected argument that appears outside of the "core of the sentence", typically with a dislocation intonation. The two examples below are from adult French. The peripheral elements are capitalised (capitals not being used here to indicate focus). > > (1) elle est folle, CETTE FILLE > she is mad, this girl > (2) MOI, LES HISTOIRES, j'aime bien > me the stories I like well > > A while back, there was a message from Lawrence Cheung on the Linguist List, inquiring about languages with right-dislocations. This is, in part, what I am interested in, but in the field of child language, and in both directions (left and right). > > Thanks a lot for your help > > > Cecile De Cat > University of York > > From shanley at bu.edu Mon May 17 19:09:59 1999 From: shanley at bu.edu (Shanley E. M. Allen) Date: Mon, 17 May 1999 15:09:59 -0400 Subject: language in Teletubbies Message-ID: In my "Intro to Language Acquisition" class, I'm having the students do a debate on the linguistic merits of the Teletubbies program, a TV program designed for children aged 1-5 which airs on PBS in the USA, on BBC in the UK, and in several other countries around the world. The students must take one of three positions: (1) the language in Teletubbies is helpful in fostering language development in child viewers, (2) the language in Teletubbies is detrimental for the language development of child viewers, and (3) the language in Teletubbies has no positive or negative effect on the language development of child viewers. To prepare for the debate, I've given the students copies of BBC and PBS press releases, interviews with the show's designers, interviews with the PBS and BBC people responsible for children's programming (all of the preceding from the BBC and PBS web sites), newspaper articles about the show, and caregivers' comments about the show from a parenting web site. However, I haven't been able to find any academic research about Teletubbies using the usual sources (CHILDES-BIB, PsycLit, ERIC, LLBA, MLA Bibliography, etc.). Extensive web searches turn up only marketing sites, chat room discussions, and articles on the sexual orientation of Tinky Winky (apart from the BBC and PBS cites noted above). Also, although the press releases and interviews with the show's designers state that the show is based on extensive language acquisition research, the source of this research is not cited anywhere, so it's not clear to me what research they used (other than of course their own piloting of the show with children in various focus groups). Thus, I would be very grateful if anyone could send me references to research concerning the language used in the Teletubbies program, or help point me in the right direction to find them myself. I would be happy to post a summary of results if there is sufficient interest. Sincerely, Shanley Allen. ***************************************************** Shanley E. M. Allen, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Boston University Graduate Program in Applied Linguistics Developmental Studies Department, School of Education 605 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA, 02215, U.S.A. phone: +1-617-358-0354 fax: +1-617-353-3924 e-mail: shanley at bu.edu ***************************************************** From wsnyder at uconnvm.uconn.edu Tue May 18 00:34:21 1999 From: wsnyder at uconnvm.uconn.edu (William B. Snyder) Date: Mon, 17 May 1999 20:34:21 -0400 Subject: dislocations and other peripheral elements in child language Message-ID: I believe Marc-Ariel Friedemann, as a graduate student at the University of Geneva, wrote a paper a few years back arguing that right-dislocation structures were unusually frequent in the child French of Philippe (Suppes/Smith/Leveille, CHILDES), as compared to adult usage. Unfortunately I don't know the reference off hand - possibly in GenGenP (the linguistics working paper series at Geneva). - William Prof. William B. Snyder Department of Linguistics University of Connecticut On Mon, 17 May 1999, Cecile De Cat wrote: > Dear InfoChildes > > I am writing to ask if anyone knows of studies of dislocations and other peripheral elements in child language. By this, I mean any type of selected or unselected argument that appears outside of the "core of the sentence", typically with a dislocation intonation. The two examples below are from adult French. The peripheral elements are capitalised (capitals not being used here to indicate focus). > > (1) elle est folle, CETTE FILLE > she is mad, this girl > (2) MOI, LES HISTOIRES, j'aime bien > me the stories I like well > > A while back, there was a message from Lawrence Cheung on the Linguist List, inquiring about languages with right-dislocations. This is, in part, what I am interested in, but in the field of child language, and in both directions (left and right). > > Thanks a lot for your help > > > Cecile De Cat > University of York > > > From geertje.leemans at let.uva.nl Tue May 18 09:36:20 1999 From: geertje.leemans at let.uva.nl (Geertje Leemans) Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 11:36:20 +0200 Subject: change in email adress Message-ID: Please note a change in my email adress Old: geertje.leemans at let.uva.nl New: geertje.leemans at hum.uva.nl Geertje Leemans Carel Fabritiuslaan 44 NL-1181 TE Amstelveen The Netherlands tel: +31 20 6476367 Email: geertje.leemans at hum.uva.nl (let op!!! nieuw emailadres!!!) From lmb32 at columbia.edu Tue May 18 12:10:29 1999 From: lmb32 at columbia.edu (Lois Bloom) Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 08:10:29 -0400 Subject: language in Teletubbies Message-ID: Monday, May 17, 1999 As far as I know, there are no studies on the value of TeleTubbies for fostering language acquisition. But, for what it's worth, I was asked by ABC News to review one of the earliest tapes to come across and comment on the controversy in Britain at the time over the relative benefit, or not, of TeleTubbies for early language acquisition. I was 'set up' to expect the worst: the controversy as explained to me was that both the TeleTubbies and the real children in the tele-vignettes used 'baby talk'. The rationale given by the producers was that baby talk would be more compatible to very young ears. The criticism was that it was a 'dumbing down' that would provide distorted speech models. Two tapes were hand delivered from NY to CT so that I could watch them one Saturday afternoon. My husband wandered in and promptly fell asleep. I loved them! First, this show (or at least the tapes I watched) is not going to 'teach' children language. But the tapes I saw did incorporate several aspects of normal language acquisition that are potentially valuable for holding very young children's attention (at least) and creating some awareness of what language does (not unimportant). Here are the features that I saw as noteworthy. One is *repetition* (the reason my husband feel asleep) --the short segments are shown, and then shown again, and sometimes yet again, which means that the young 1- or 2- year-old who didn't catch it the first time gets another shot at it. Second, there are certain concepts built into the vignettes that echo research in normal language acquisition by myself and others: in particular, the use of relational words like "more," "again" and "uhoh" and "gone" - -fairly basic concept-word connections for 1-year-olds. (If students want cites to the relevant research, I can provide them). So somebody had to have done some reading; they weren't showcasing "1 ball," "2 balls," "red ball," "blue ball". And the pace is slow, and easy, and colorful, and catchy, and incorporates expectation as well as surprise (BUT I have to admit, I haven't watched any segments since). Will the use of so-called 'baby talk' be hurtful? Maybe there will be research out there some day to say that it is, but I seriously doubt it. The talk is entirely intelligible, and the other features of the productions I watched far outweigh in value any potential harm to language acquisition. Face it: this is baby fodder, meant to sooth and entertain VERY young children. Should such children be parked in front of a TV for soothing? Good question. But one that I am not prepared to answer - -it's been a long time since I've been the mother of a 1-year-old. And I understand that both babies and mothers enjoy them --must be a reason for that. Lois Bloom ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Lois Bloom, Ph.D. Edward Lee Thorndike Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Education Teachers College, Columbia University 525 West 120th Street New York, New York 10027 PHONE: 212-678-3888 (office); 203-261-4622 (home) FAX: 203-261-4689 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From v.c.gathercole at bangor.ac.uk Tue May 18 17:45:41 1999 From: v.c.gathercole at bangor.ac.uk (Ginny Mueller Gathercole) Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 17:45:41 +0000 Subject: research position Message-ID: UNIVERSITY OF WALES, BANGOR SCHOOL OF PSYCHOLOGY Research Assistant or Research Officer Salary : ?15,735 - 17,570 p.a. (on R&A Grade 1A/B) Applications are invited for a three-year postdoctoral position funded by an ESRC grant on "The acquisition of Welsh mutation, gender, and grammatical categories". The successful applicant will work under Dr. Virginia Mueller Gathercole. The successful applicant will be required to have a specialisation in Psychology, Psycholinguistics, Linguistics, or related area and hold or expect to hold a Ph.D degree. Native or near-native fluency in Welsh and English are required. Experience in child language research and experimental studies desirable. The ability to program on a Macintosh computer is desirable but not essential. The post will begin in September 1999. Application forms and further particulars are available from: Personnel Services, University of Wales, Bangor, Gwynedd, LL57 2DG. Tel: 01248-382926/388132. e-mail: pos020 at bangor.ac.uk Please quote reference number 99/67 when applying. Closing dates for applications: Thursday July 1, 1999. Informal enquiries regarding this position can be directed to Dr. Virginia Mueller Gathercole, School of Psychology, University of Wales, Bangor, LL57 2DG (01248 383626; v.c.gathercole at bangor.ac.uk). Committed to Equal Opportunities Virginia C. Mueller Gathercole, Ph.D. Ysgol Seicoleg School of Pyschology Prifysgol Cymru, Bangor University of Wales, Bangor Gwynedd LL57 2DG Gwynedd LL57 2DG Cymru Wales | /\ | / \/\ Tel: 44 (0)1248 382624 | /\/ \ \ Fax: 44 (0)1248 382599 | / ======\=\ | B A N G O R From vhouwer at uia.ua.ac.be Wed May 19 12:41:10 1999 From: vhouwer at uia.ua.ac.be (Annick.DeHouwer) Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 14:41:10 +0200 Subject: Symposium 2000 (fwd) Message-ID: Dear colleagues, I am posting the message below at the request of Dr. Marion Fredman, Chair of the Multilingual Affairs Committee of the International Association for Logopedics and Phoniatrics that is organising the conference advertised below. Please do not send requests for more information to me but to Robbie Cameron (see below). Plenary speakers for the Symposium include Professors Brian MacWhinney, Michel Paradis and Catherine Snow. --Annick De Houwer ---------- Forwarded message ---------- The 2nd International Symposium on Communication Disorders in Bilingual Populations (Symposium 2000) will take place from 18-21 July 2000 at Kwa Maritane, Pilansberg National Park South Africa. For full details visit our website at or contact the Symposium Office at P O Box 27147 Parkview 2122 South Africa Tel/Fax 27 11 788 3299 or robbie.cameron at pixie.co.za From macw at cmu.edu Thu May 20 00:06:37 1999 From: macw at cmu.edu (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 20:06:37 -0400 Subject: CHILDES/BIB server back up Message-ID: Dear Info-CHILDES, The machine that was serving the CHILDES/BIB is back up. The link is on the CHILDES home page. Or else you can go to: http://alaska.psy.cmu.edu/RIS/RISWEB.isa Sorry about the downtime. --Brian MacWhinney From s.velleman at bangor.ac.uk Tue May 18 16:56:11 1999 From: s.velleman at bangor.ac.uk (Shelley L. Velleman) Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 17:56:11 +0100 Subject: language in Teletubbies Message-ID: I do agree (based on personal opinion) that, overall, the idea, pacing, content etc. of the Teletubbies is appropriate for toddlers. However, a student of mine at U. Mass. - Amherst, Sarah Schmidt, has recently completed a small study of the phonological patterns of the Teletubbies. The basic reserch question was, "Are the Teletubbies' phonologies similar to those of "real" two-year-olds?". The results can be summarized as follows: 1. In some respects, they are, but see below. 2. In some respects, they are advanced, especially in production of fricatives, liquids, and clusters. 3. In some respects, their phonologies are deviant. Of particular note are: odd substitutions for liquids (e.g., [v] for /r/) odd substitutions of liquids, including liquid clusters (e.g., gr- for initial singleton [p] and initial singleton [m]!) omissions of initial and medial consonants (as in [E?o] for "hello", but also elsewhere), including consonants which are precociously produced in other contexts (e.g., "clever" is pronounced correctly, but "look" is pronounced as [Uk]). Will this have any effect on the children who watch???? I don't know. I heard recently from some of his students that Jim Scobbie at Queen Margaret University College at Edinburgh had done some investigating re: the Teletubbies, but haven't had a chance to ask him directly about it yet. We hope to present different aspects of these results at BU and/or ASHA this fall. Shelley Velleman P.S. I have tried to get a "press pack" from the British "home" of the Tubbies, "Ragdoll Productions", with no success. How/where did you get yours?? Shanley E. M. Allen wrote: > > In my "Intro to Language Acquisition" class, I'm having the students do a > debate on the linguistic merits of the Teletubbies program, a TV program > designed for children aged 1-5 which airs on PBS in the USA, on BBC in the > UK, and in several other countries around the world. The students must > take one of three positions: (1) the language in Teletubbies is helpful in > fostering language development in child viewers, (2) the language in > Teletubbies is detrimental for the language development of child viewers, > and (3) the language in Teletubbies has no positive or negative effect on > the language development of child viewers. > > To prepare for the debate, I've given the students copies of BBC and PBS > press releases, interviews with the show's designers, interviews with the > PBS and BBC people responsible for children's programming (all of the > preceding from the BBC and PBS web sites), newspaper articles about the > show, and caregivers' comments about the show from a parenting web site. > > However, I haven't been able to find any academic research about > Teletubbies using the usual sources (CHILDES-BIB, PsycLit, ERIC, LLBA, MLA > Bibliography, etc.). Extensive web searches turn up only marketing sites, > chat room discussions, and articles on the sexual orientation of Tinky > Winky (apart from the BBC and PBS cites noted above). Also, although the > press releases and interviews with the show's designers state that the show > is based on extensive language acquisition research, the source of this > research is not cited anywhere, so it's not clear to me what research they > used (other than of course their own piloting of the show with children in > various focus groups). > > Thus, I would be very grateful if anyone could send me references to > research concerning the language used in the Teletubbies program, or help > point me in the right direction to find them myself. I would be happy to > post a summary of results if there is sufficient interest. > > Sincerely, > Shanley Allen. > > ***************************************************** > Shanley E. M. Allen, Ph.D. > Assistant Professor, Boston University > Graduate Program in Applied Linguistics > Developmental Studies Department, School of Education > 605 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA, 02215, U.S.A. > phone: +1-617-358-0354 > fax: +1-617-353-3924 > e-mail: shanley at bu.edu > ***************************************************** From lmb32 at columbia.edu Thu May 20 10:31:30 1999 From: lmb32 at columbia.edu (Lois Bloom) Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 06:31:30 -0400 Subject: language in Teletubbies Message-ID: The phonological details are interesting, but difficult to measure their potential influence I suspect. One question I had at the time was whether the TTs were saying 'uhoh' or 'hello' --both words 'fit' at times, but 'uhoh' more often in the tapes I watched (these came from ABC News). --Lois Bloom From fs3a508 at rzaixsrv2.rrz.uni-hamburg.de Thu May 20 09:55:10 1999 From: fs3a508 at rzaixsrv2.rrz.uni-hamburg.de (Juergen M. Meisel) Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 11:55:10 +0200 Subject: Bilingualism: Research Center & Jobs Message-ID: A new research center will be established at the Univeristy of Hamburg. Please find below a short description of the Center and a job announcement for one of its research projects. Jurgen M. Meisel COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH CENTER ON MULTILINGUALISM (Sonderforschungsbereich Mehrsprachigkeit) University of Hamburg A research center for the study of multilingualism, funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Science Foundation) has been established at the University of Hamburg (Germany) as of July 1999. The Center currently comprises 13 research projects investigating linguistic aspects of bi- and multilingualism. The focus of this research lies in microanalyses of oral and written communication in multilingual settings and in language development in the bilingual individual. This work starts from the assumptions that human cognition predisposes the individual to become multilingual, that the knowledge of more than one language increases communicative possibilities rather than decreasing them, and that diachronic studies of multilingualism can lead to a better under-standing of contemporary situations and to solutions for emerging problems. In order to put these claims to the test, cognitive as well as cultural studies have been designed by which specific hypotheses, based on these assumptions, are examined empirically. The multilingual settings studied include social as well as family bilingualism, postcolonial situations as well as ones resulting from labor migration, and also contexts where more than one language is used in education or at the workplace, at home or during extended or short-term stays in a foreign country. The languages studied include Aymara, Basque, Danish, English, French, German, Greek, Guarani, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Luganda, Lwo, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Turkish, and several diachronic and regional varieties of some of these. By comparing an array of linguistically, culturally, and socially diverse settings, the aim is to identify more general as well as situation-specific factors favoring multilingualism or rendering it more difficult for the indvidual and for society. The 13 research projects carried out during the three year period 1999-2002 are listed below. The Center is organized into two groups. Group A, entitled Oral and Written Texts and Types of Discourse in Multilingual communication, investigates the production and comprehension of multilingual language use in various social, cultural and institutional contexts, contemporary as well as previous ones. Group B, The Development of Multilingualism, is concerned with diachronic change as well as with the ontogenesis of multilingualism, investigating the simultaneous acquisition of more than one first language and the successive acquisition of several languages, and contrasting both to monolingual first language development. COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH CENTER ON MULTILINGUALISM (Sonderforschungsbereich Mehrsprachigkeit) Chair: Prof.Dr. Jurgen M. Meisel Universitat Hamburg Romanisches Seminar von Melle-Park 6 D-20146 Hamburg jmm at rrz.uni-hamburg.de Co-chair and coordinator of group A: Prof.Dr. Jochen Rehbein rehbein at rrz.uni-hamburg.de Co-chair and coordinator of group B: Prof.Dr. Conxita Lleo lleo at rrz.uni-hamburg.de Group A: Oral and Written Texts and Types of Discourse in Multilingual Communication A1: Japanese and German expert discourse in mono- and multilingual settings (Principal investigator: Jochen Rehbein) A2: Interpreting in the hospital (PI: Kristin Buhrig) A3: Processing of spoken language in the process of interpreting (PI: Walther von Hahn) A4: Covert translation (PI: Juliane House) A5: Literacy practices in cross-cultural perspective (PI: Mechthild Reh) A6: Semicommunication and receptive multilingualism in contemporary Scandinavia (PI: Kurt Braunmuller) A7: Disticha Catonis: Didactic forms of discourse between Latin and the vernacular (PI: Nikolaus Henkel) A8: Stylistic levels and diglossia in the modern Hellenic world (PI: Hans Eideneier) Group B: The Development of Multilingualism B1: Multilingualism as cause and effect of language change: Historical syntax of Romance languages (PI: Jurgen M. Meisel) B2: Simultaneous and successive acquisition of bilingualism (PI: Jurgen M. Meisel) B3: Prosodic constraints on phonological and morphological development in bilingual first language acquisition (PI: Conxita Lleo) B4: Bilingualism in early childhood: Comparing Italian/German and French/German (PI: Natascha Muller) B5: Linguistic connectivity in bilingual Turkish-German children (PI: Jochen Rehbein) JOB OPPORTUNITIES 1 Post-doctoral researcher (full position) 1 Post-graduate researcher (half position) in THE research project on "Simultaneous and Successive Acquisition of Bilingualism". This project will investigate similarities and differences in grammatical development between bilingual first language acquisition, monolingual first language acquisition, and adult second language acquisition. It is one of 13 projects of the Collaborative Research Center on Multilingualism funded by the Deutsche Forschungsge-meinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) to be established at the University of Hamburg as of July 1st, 1999. Pending final decision by the DFG, both positions will begin on this date and will extend for a period of three years. The post-doctoral candidate will be expected to co-direct this research group together with J.M. Meisel. The post-doctoral position can be renewed for one three-year period. The salary of the post-doctoral researcher corresponds to that of an assistant professor in German universities (BAT IIa). The post-graduate researcher must hold an M.A. (or equivalent). He or she will receive half of the BAT IIa salary for a work load of appr. 19 hours per week and will be expected to complete a doctoral dissertation on a topic related to the topic of the research project. Requirements sought are: good knowledge of syntactic theory (Principles and Parameters Theory and possibly of the Minimalist Program), experience with language acquisition research, and good knowledge of at least two of the following languages: German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Basque. Also desirable would be familiarity with speech processing research and/or experience with corpus analysis and/or com-puter skills. Send application (CV, list of publications, names of two referees) by June 15, 1999 to Prof. J. M. Meisel, University of Hamburg, Romanisches Seminar, von Melle-Park 6, D 20146 Hamburg; for further inquiries contact jmm at rrz.uni-hamburg.de ========================================================== Juergen M. Meisel jmm at rrz.uni-hamburg.de Universitaet Hamburg Tel (+49-40) 428 38-4793 Romanisches Seminar Fax (+49-40) 428 38-4147 von Melle-Park 6 = NEW PHONE NUMBER! D 20146 Hamburg ========================================================== From cec at cwcom.net Thu May 20 10:50:13 1999 From: cec at cwcom.net (Cecile De Cat) Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 11:50:13 +0100 Subject: dislocations and other peripheral elements Message-ID: I wish to thank all the people who kindly sent me references, comments and suggestions with respect to the query I put on the list a few days ago. The replies were from Monique Vion, Aurora Bel, Dan Slobin, Elena Nicoladis, Eve Clark, John Grinstead, Gee Macrory, Mela Sarkar, Tom Roeper, Twila Tardif, and William B. Snyder. Languages mentionned: French, Turkish, Catalan, Spanish, Cantonese, Chinese (and particularly, Beijing dialect), English. References cited: Aksu-Koc, A., & Slobin, D. I. (1985). Acquisition of Turkish. In D. I. Slobin (Ed.), The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition: Vol. 1. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Clark, Eve (1985) The acquisition of French. From her chapter-cum-monograph that appeared in Slobin 1985, The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition (vol.1) Ferdinand, Astrid (1996) The Development of Functional Categories. The Acquisition of the Subject in French, PhD. Dissertation, Holland Institute of Generative Linguistics (particularly chapter 6). Friedemann, Marc-Ariel (1993/94) The Underlying Position of External Arguments in French: A Study in Adult and Child Grammar, Language Acquisicion, 3:3, 209-255. Grinstead, John (1999) His dissertation on the syntax of child Catalan and Spanish addresses the emergence of left-dislocated elements. Kuntay, Aylin and Dan Slobin wrote a paper on Turkish parental input, including dislocations; They have just finished a review paper on Turkich child language, to appear in the new journal, Turkic Linguistics. Labelle, Marie & Daniel Valois (1996) The Status of Post-verbal Subjects in French Child Language, Probus, 8, 53-80. Pierce, Amy. (1992) Language Acquisition and Syntactic Theory: a Comparative Analysis of French and English Child Grammars. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Powers, Susan. (1996) The Growth of the Phrase Marker: Evidence from Subjects, University of Maryland, Maryland. Vion, M. (1992). The role of intonation in processing left and right dislocations in French. Journal of experimental child Psychology. 53, 45-71 work by Virginia Brennan, cited in T.Roeper's paper on Merger theory that appeared in Clahsen (ed. (1996) Generative Perspectives on Language Acquisition. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Again, thanks a lot Cecile De Cat From a.karmiloff-Smith at ich.ucl.ac.uk Thu May 20 13:56:40 1999 From: a.karmiloff-Smith at ich.ucl.ac.uk (Annette Karmiloff-Smith) Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 13:56:40 +0000 Subject: infant number - responses Message-ID: I put out the following request on CHILDES/DEV-EUROPE and got the following replies from Alan Slater, Bruce Hood and Maria Nunes, for which many thanks. >I know of all the work on infant number in 3 month olds upwards. >But I do not know of any work on neonates' processing of numerosity >>discriminations, etc. although I heard it referred to on the radio. >Can someone point me to references please on newborns. >Many thanks >Annette It seems only one study has focused on newborns with respect to visually presented stimuli, that it was difficult to replicate except with dot displays, and that one has of course to watch density differences: >Antell, S., & Keating, D. (1983). Perception of numerical invariance in >neonates. Child Development, vol 54, pp 695-702. > and one study on newsborns with language-relevant auditory stimuli: >Bijeljac-Babic, R., Bertoncini, J., & Mehler, J. (1991), How do >four-day-old infants categorize multisyllabic utterances? >Developmental Psychology, 29, 711-721. Other refs. were re older infants which we all probably know, plus one piece of work I didn't know about: >Lynne Tan, a previous student of Peter >Bryant who did her PhD on infant's understanding of numerosity at about >one year ago. Her e-mail is: lynne_tan at nus.edu.sg. > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Professor Annette Karmiloff-Smith Head, Neurocognitive Development Unit Institute of Child Health 30 Guilford Street London WC1N 1EH, U.K. tel: +44 171 905 2754 secretary: 242 9789 ext.0735 fax: +44 171 242 7717 mobile: 0961 10 59 63 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From a.karmiloff-Smith at ich.ucl.ac.uk Thu May 20 14:20:51 1999 From: a.karmiloff-Smith at ich.ucl.ac.uk (Annette Karmiloff-Smith) Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 14:20:51 +0000 Subject: language in Teletubbies Message-ID: out of curiosity, is the US version of Teletubbies using the British voicing or has the voiceover been redone to a US accent? I heard it in French the other day and thought the language sounded more "adult-like" than what I'd heard on British TV but this was just a quick impression of course. Annette K-S At 17:56 +0100 18/5/99, Shelley L. Velleman wrote: >I do agree (based on personal opinion) that, overall, the idea, pacing, >content etc. of the Teletubbies is appropriate for toddlers. > >However, a student of mine at U. Mass. - Amherst, Sarah Schmidt, >has recently completed a small study of the phonological patterns of the >Teletubbies. The basic reserch question was, "Are the Teletubbies' >phonologies similar to those of "real" two-year-olds?". The results can >be summarized as follows: > >1. In some respects, they are, but see below. > >2. In some respects, they are advanced, especially in production of >fricatives, liquids, and clusters. > >3. In some respects, their phonologies are deviant. Of particular note >are: > odd substitutions for liquids (e.g., [v] for /r/) > odd substitutions of liquids, including liquid clusters (e.g., gr- for >initial singleton [p] and initial singleton [m]!) > omissions of initial and medial consonants (as in [E?o] for "hello", >but also elsewhere), including consonants which are precociously >produced in other contexts (e.g., "clever" is pronounced correctly, but >"look" is pronounced as [Uk]). > >Will this have any effect on the children who watch???? I don't know. > >I heard recently from some of his students that Jim Scobbie at Queen >Margaret University College at Edinburgh had done some investigating re: >the Teletubbies, but haven't had a chance to ask him directly about it >yet. > >We hope to present different aspects of these results at BU and/or ASHA >this fall. > >Shelley Velleman > > >P.S. I have tried to get a "press pack" from the British "home" of the >Tubbies, "Ragdoll Productions", with no success. How/where did you get >yours?? > > > >Shanley E. M. Allen wrote: >> >> In my "Intro to Language Acquisition" class, I'm having the students do a >> debate on the linguistic merits of the Teletubbies program, a TV program >> designed for children aged 1-5 which airs on PBS in the USA, on BBC in the >> UK, and in several other countries around the world. The students must >> take one of three positions: (1) the language in Teletubbies is helpful in >> fostering language development in child viewers, (2) the language in >> Teletubbies is detrimental for the language development of child viewers, >> and (3) the language in Teletubbies has no positive or negative effect on >> the language development of child viewers. >> >> To prepare for the debate, I've given the students copies of BBC and PBS >> press releases, interviews with the show's designers, interviews with the >> PBS and BBC people responsible for children's programming (all of the >> preceding from the BBC and PBS web sites), newspaper articles about the >> show, and caregivers' comments about the show from a parenting web site. >> >> However, I haven't been able to find any academic research about >> Teletubbies using the usual sources (CHILDES-BIB, PsycLit, ERIC, LLBA, MLA >> Bibliography, etc.). Extensive web searches turn up only marketing sites, >> chat room discussions, and articles on the sexual orientation of Tinky >> Winky (apart from the BBC and PBS cites noted above). Also, although the >> press releases and interviews with the show's designers state that the show >> is based on extensive language acquisition research, the source of this >> research is not cited anywhere, so it's not clear to me what research they >> used (other than of course their own piloting of the show with children in >> various focus groups). >> >> Thus, I would be very grateful if anyone could send me references to >> research concerning the language used in the Teletubbies program, or help >> point me in the right direction to find them myself. I would be happy to >> post a summary of results if there is sufficient interest. >> >> Sincerely, >> Shanley Allen. >> >> ***************************************************** >> Shanley E. M. Allen, Ph.D. >> Assistant Professor, Boston University >> Graduate Program in Applied Linguistics >> Developmental Studies Department, School of Education >> 605 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA, 02215, U.S.A. >> phone: +1-617-358-0354 >> fax: +1-617-353-3924 >> e-mail: shanley at bu.edu >> ***************************************************** From s.velleman at bangor.ac.uk Thu May 20 13:48:54 1999 From: s.velleman at bangor.ac.uk (Shelley L. Velleman) Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 14:48:54 +0100 Subject: language in Teletubbies Message-ID: I had read in some media report that it was re-dubbed for American audiences, but I think that may have been the announcer only or something, because the voices and the phono patterns seem the same to me in both versions. (Certainly, on the American shows, they say things like "Mind the puddle", which have obviously not been translated!) Shelley From feldman at stripe.Colorado.EDU Thu May 20 16:24:28 1999 From: feldman at stripe.Colorado.EDU (FELDMAN ANDREA) Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 10:24:28 -0600 Subject: language in Teletubbies Message-ID: I think 'uhoh' is sometimes used by the Teletubbies to mean 'hello'. (I have often watched the show with my three-year-old.) --Andrea Feldman On Thu, 20 May 1999, Lois Bloom wrote: > > The phonological details are interesting, but difficult to measure their > potential influence I suspect. One question I had at the time was whether > the TTs were saying 'uhoh' or 'hello' --both words 'fit' at times, but > 'uhoh' more often in the tapes I watched (these came from ABC News). > > --Lois Bloom > > From a.karmiloff-Smith at ich.ucl.ac.uk Thu May 20 19:25:02 1999 From: a.karmiloff-Smith at ich.ucl.ac.uk (Annette Karmiloff-Smith) Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 19:25:02 +0000 Subject: infant number - responses Message-ID: thanks, Peter, I'll inform all just in case someone tries to find it. Annette >Annette, > >I've just noticed an error in the reference I sent you >(Bijeljac-Babic et al.). The date of vol 29 is 1993, not 1991. > >Sorry, > >Peter > > >----------------------------------------------------------- >Peter Willatts, >Department of Psychology, University of Dundee, >Dundee, DD1 4HN, Scotland, UK. >tel: +44 1382 344618 >fax: +44 1382 229993 From mabel at dole.lsi.ukans.edu Thu May 20 20:15:40 1999 From: mabel at dole.lsi.ukans.edu (Mabel Rice) Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 14:15:40 -0600 Subject: teletubbies Message-ID: I can provide some further background on the Teletubbies and language questions raised by Shanley Allen. Last spring, I was contacted by PBS to review several Teletubbies tapes that were to be aired on PBS beginning in April ?98. They provided written materials that included press clippings of the controversies surrounding the characters? use of baby talk, and descriptive information about the development of the series, and bio material on Anne Wood and Andrew Davenport, developers of the series. Andrew is a graduate of University College London where he majored in Speech Sciences. The packet of material did not include any specific information about formative research. I viewed the two episodes they provided for that purpose, and have occasionally viewed bits and pieces of PBS broadcasting, so do not feel expert on the program but my rather general response is favorable, in light of some of my previous research. I sketch here the gist of my comments for PBS. First, it seemed timely to provide some material suitable for toddlers. There is extensive documentation of the fact that young children are exposed to a lot of TV, so it is positive to have something potentially beneficial for their viewing. In a study with Dafna Lemish in which toddlers were observed in viewing contexts in their home, we found potentially language-facilitative caretaker-child interactions during the viewing, especially of educational TV such as Sesame Street. (Cf Lemish & Rice, Television as a talking picture book: a prop for language acquisition, J Child Language, 1986, 13, 251-274.) As these findings and other studies indicate, even young children are cognitively active viewers of the medium of television; they like to talk about what they see, they recognize objects and can relate them to objects in their own experience, and they seem to want to make sense of their viewing and to communicate that to others. Other studies have found that children (and chimps) prefer to view other children (or chimps), i.e., that they watch most intently others like themselves. It would be interesting to see if this holds for Teletubbies. Next, in the episodes I viewed, the writers present dialog in ways likely to appeal to and be understood by young children. The vocabulary levels are of suitable content, and there is considerable redundancy, both in the sense of talking about the here-and-now and in the sense of repeated presentations of the same words/concepts. The sentence structures are also kept at simple clausal levels. These attributes characterize Sesame Street and Mr Rogers as well (cf Rice & Haight, 1986, ?Motherese? of Mr Rogers: A description of the dialogue of educational television programs. Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 51, 282-287). These and other features may be instrumental in the positive effect of Sesame Street viewing on vocabulary development (cf Rice, Huston, Truglio, & Wright, 1990, Words from Sesame Street: Learning Vocabulary While Viewing, Developmental Psychology, 26, 421-428) (and why there seems to be no effect for adult TV fare such as soap operas or for entertainment animation which has very adult-like dialog). I was struck by some innovative uses of dialog in Teletubbies. One is the characters? use of ?Baby Talk?, and it will be interesting to learn how accurately the producers have scripted it and how children respond to it (Sarah Schmidt?s analysis should be helpful here). The media flap reminds me of the reaction to Oscar the Grouch, who says things like ?Me want cookie,? which caused a bit of an uproar at the time, but which seems to be accepted by children as part of his character. I suspect that young viewers will regard the dialog of the teletubbies in the same way as they regard the other sources of ?baby talk? in their lives. The writers built in some interesting ways to highlight adult dialog for the children, in that it often appears as the voices of the ?Voice Trumpets,? which are part of the show?s emphasis on interactive technology and appears as a sort of flower- microphone that sticks up out of the ground like a flower. This ?baby talk? for the teletubbies and ?adult talk? for the ?voice trumpets? is an interesting way to differentiate the two ?registers? and it would be interesting to know if the children benefit from it. Finally, the ?real world? of live children, often toddlers, is in the program via the televised segments where further overlap of dialog and referents is provided in the form of live dialog from children and voice-over narration. So when the live footage begins of real children, the viewers know they are going to be hearing ?real talk? of children and adults. These techniques serve to associate the presentation forms with the kind of dialog presented, which could be very effective in helping the little viewers follow the dialog. The media focus on the "baby talk" of the lead characters seems to have overlooked the other parts of the program A final comment--it is my recollection that I was told that the US version had been dubbed to eliminate the phrases and lexical items that don?t jump the Atlantic, but perhaps they did not do a comprehensive dubbing of the script and a few bits remain. Let me repeat that I do not attest to a scientific evaluation of the program?s effectiveness in fostering language development, nor do I know of such an investigation. And I do not have an investment in the production company and am not a regular viewer. Happy viewing, Mabel From z2221742 at student.unsw.edu.au Thu May 20 23:03:18 1999 From: z2221742 at student.unsw.edu.au (Eiko Ushida) Date: Fri, 21 May 1999 09:03:18 +1000 Subject: language in Teletubbies Message-ID: I do agree (based on personal opinion) that, overall, the idea, pacing, content etc. of the Teletubbies is appropriate for toddlers. However, a student of mine at U. Mass. - Amherst, Sarah Schmidt, has recently completed a small study of the phonological patterns of the Teletubbies. The basic reserch question was, "Are the Teletubbies' phonologies similar to those of "real" two-year-olds?". The results can be summarized as follows: 1. In some respects, they are, but see below. 2. In some respects, they are advanced, especially in production of fricatives, liquids, and clusters. 3. In some respects, their phonologies are deviant. Of particular note are: odd substitutions for liquids (e.g., [v] for /r/) odd substitutions of liquids, including liquid clusters (e.g., gr- for initial singleton [p] and initial singleton [m]!) omissions of initial and medial consonants (as in [E?o] for "hello", but also elsewhere), including consonants which are precociously produced in other contexts (e.g., "clever" is pronounced correctly, but "look" is pronounced as [Uk]). Will this have any effect on the children who watch???? I don't know. I heard recently from some of his students that Jim Scobbie at Queen Margaret University College at Edinburgh had done some investigating re: the Teletubbies, but haven't had a chance to ask him directly about it yet. We hope to present different aspects of these results at BU and/or ASHA this fall. Shelley Velleman P.S. I have tried to get a "press pack" from the British "home" of the Tubbies, "Ragdoll Productions", with no success. How/where did you get yours?? Shanley E. M. Allen wrote: > > In my "Intro to Language Acquisition" class, I'm having the students do a > debate on the linguistic merits of the Teletubbies program, a TV program > designed for children aged 1-5 which airs on PBS in the USA, on BBC in the > UK, and in several other countries around the world. The students must > take one of three positions: (1) the language in Teletubbies is helpful in > fostering language development in child viewers, (2) the language in > Teletubbies is detrimental for the language development of child viewers, > and (3) the language in Teletubbies has no positive or negative effect on > the language development of child viewers. > > To prepare for the debate, I've given the students copies of BBC and PBS > press releases, interviews with the show's designers, interviews with the > PBS and BBC people responsible for children's programming (all of the > preceding from the BBC and PBS web sites), newspaper articles about the > show, and caregivers' comments about the show from a parenting web site. > > However, I haven't been able to find any academic research about > Teletubbies using the usual sources (CHILDES-BIB, PsycLit, ERIC, LLBA, MLA > Bibliography, etc.). Extensive web searches turn up only marketing sites, > chat room discussions, and articles on the sexual orientation of Tinky > Winky (apart from the BBC and PBS cites noted above). Also, although the > press releases and interviews with the show's designers state that the show > is based on extensive language acquisition research, the source of this > research is not cited anywhere, so it's not clear to me what research they > used (other than of course their own piloting of the show with children in > various focus groups). > > Thus, I would be very grateful if anyone could send me references to > research concerning the language used in the Teletubbies program, or help > point me in the right direction to find them myself. I would be happy to > post a summary of results if there is sufficient interest. > > Sincerely, > Shanley Allen. > > ***************************************************** > Shanley E. M. Allen, Ph.D. > Assistant Professor, Boston University > Graduate Program in Applied Linguistics > Developmental Studies Department, School of Education > 605 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA, 02215, U.S.A. > phone: +1-617-358-0354 > fax: +1-617-353-3924 > e-mail: shanley at bu.edu > ***************************************************** ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Eiko Ushida University of New South Wales From feldman at stripe.Colorado.EDU Fri May 21 01:54:21 1999 From: feldman at stripe.Colorado.EDU (FELDMAN ANDREA) Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 19:54:21 -0600 Subject: language in Teletubbies Message-ID: I have just received a reply (off list) that mentions that the Po doll says 'eh oh' for 'hello'--perhaps a British pronunciation of 'uh oh' ? I wonder if the writers of the show chose this word (or pronunciation) to mimic children's use of the word 'hello' for 'telephone' (though my child used the word 'bye bye' for telephone')--I can imagine a rather far-fetched connection, if a caregiver said 'uh oh' every time the phone rang... Andrea Feldman On Thu, 20 May 1999, FELDMAN ANDREA wrote: > I think 'uhoh' is sometimes used by the Teletubbies to mean 'hello'. > (I have often watched the show with my three-year-old.) > > --Andrea Feldman > On Thu, 20 May 1999, Lois Bloom wrote: > > > > > The phonological details are interesting, but difficult to measure their > > potential influence I suspect. One question I had at the time was whether > > the TTs were saying 'uhoh' or 'hello' --both words 'fit' at times, but > > 'uhoh' more often in the tapes I watched (these came from ABC News). > > > > --Lois Bloom > > > > > > From eclark at psych.stanford.edu Fri May 21 05:23:08 1999 From: eclark at psych.stanford.edu (Eve V. Clark) Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 22:23:08 -0700 Subject: Fwd: Re: language in Teletubbies Message-ID: Perhaps there are TWO forms here, eh-oh (hello, without the 'h' or 'l' sounds) and uh-oh. Uh-oh is certainly current in British English (used in much teh same way as in the US with young children), and the other form may be an attempt to represent infant speech without the medial -l- in hello. I haven't heard any of the programs so this could be far off the mark, but Americans sometimes have trouble with British vowels... Eve Clark ================== >Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 19:54:21 -0600 (MDT) >From: FELDMAN ANDREA >Subject: Re: language in Teletubbies > >I have just received a reply (off list) that mentions that the >Po doll says 'eh oh' for 'hello'--perhaps a British pronunciation >of 'uh oh' ? I wonder if the writers of the show chose this >word (or pronunciation) to mimic children's use of the word >'hello' for 'telephone' (though my child used the word 'bye bye' >for telephone')--I can imagine a rather far-fetched connection, >if a caregiver said 'uh oh' every time the phone rang... >Andrea Feldman > >On Thu, 20 May 1999, FELDMAN ANDREA wrote: > >> I think 'uhoh' is sometimes used by the Teletubbies to mean 'hello'. >> (I have often watched the show with my three-year-old.) >> >> --Andrea Feldman >> On Thu, 20 May 1999, Lois Bloom wrote: >> >> > >> > The phonological details are interesting, but difficult to measure their >> > potential influence I suspect. One question I had at the time was whether >> > the TTs were saying 'uhoh' or 'hello' --both words 'fit' at times, but >> > 'uhoh' more often in the tapes I watched (these came from ABC News). >> > >> > --Lois Bloom >> > >> > >> >> > From s.velleman at bangor.ac.uk Fri May 21 09:21:08 1999 From: s.velleman at bangor.ac.uk (Shelley L. Velleman) Date: Fri, 21 May 1999 10:21:08 +0100 Subject: language in Teletubbies Message-ID: In the shows that I've watched, there are times when "hello" is clearly the target word (based on context) and others when "uh-oh" is. I haven't gone back and counted our transcriptions, but I believe that "hello" has [E] more often as its first vowel, while "uh-oh" more often has [^].. At times, only the context can differentiate them (or, at least, the ear can't). Maria Margaronis, in an article in The Nation (3/16/98), quotes a statement which she was required to sign, to confirm "my understanding of some salient Teletubby facts" before she was allowed to interview Ken Viselman, American representative of Ragdoll Productions. This statement, reportedly, included the following: "The Teletubbies do not say 'haro' as reported in various stories in the U.K. and U.S. press. They say 'eh-oh' and 'oh-oh'." So, apparently, Ragdoll Productions intends these to be two different word forms. By the way, I mis-spelled my collaborator's name in my first message: It's Sarah _Schmit_ (no "d"). Sorry, Sarah! Shelley Velleman From lf at lri.fr Fri May 21 09:21:10 1999 From: lf at lri.fr (Lise Fontaine) Date: Fri, 21 May 1999 11:21:10 +0200 Subject: eh-oh vs. uh-oh in Teletubbies Message-ID: Having watched the program far too many times and in three versions, I would have to say that I think there are indeed two forms. It is certainly very clear in the version from France that something like e?o is used as a greeting, with a wave, (interesting that they have kept that and not something close to bonjour) so you get a series of e?o Dipsy e?o Lala, etc. as they go through each name saying 'hello' ('bonjour' whatever). I am not sure of the use of uh-oh (oh dear) in the French version, but it is certainly there in the US and British versions in a context of some sort of regret. The male voice over has been changed in the US version to an American voice (although I wouldn't be willing to bet money on that, it's how it sounded to me.) My 18 month old seems to distinguish between the two forms (am I crazy?), he puts his hand in front of his mouth and says uh-oh when he drops something, I haven't heard him say anything like e?o and he doesn't seem to say anything at all for hello/bonjour. He does produce something like which sounds to me like a cross between bye bye and au revoir. (however I don't think it is necessarily that) He hears both regularly from us and of course the Teletubbies say it about a million times at the end of the tape (and he watches it in English and in French). best wishes, Lise Fontaine > Perhaps there are TWO forms here, eh-oh (hello, without the 'h' or >'l' sounds) and uh-oh. Uh-oh is certainly current in British English >(used in much teh same way as in the US with young children), and the >other form may be an attempt to represent infant speech without the >medial -l- in hello. From mcoimbra at portoweb.com.br Fri May 21 13:37:37 1999 From: mcoimbra at portoweb.com.br (Miriam Coimbra) Date: Fri, 21 May 1999 10:37:37 -0300 Subject: teletubbies in Brazilian Portuguese Message-ID: The teletubbies characters when speaking Brazilian Portuguese have somewhat different phonological patterns than the ones summarized by Sarah Schimdt for English. It seems that the Brazilian tv network responsible for the broadcasting and translation adjusted the language to an older age range (maybe 3 to 4 years-old). The Brazilian version agrees with the English version in relation to the production of fricatives and liquids in words like: dois 'two'[dojs] bola 'ball'[bola] The production of: tchau 'bye' [tSaw] gipsy [dZipsi] is advanced for a toddler in Brazilian Portuguese However, I have not found any deviant productions in Portuguese such as the ones pointed out by Sarah. In relation to clusters, only once in the entire program the characters reduced a cluster to a CV sequence in the word tres 'three' [tejs]. It seems to me the Brazilian version has lost the most important chracteristic of the English version which is the intention to make the characters sound like a toddler. Miriam Coimbra Unijui Ijui, RS Brasil Miriam Coimbra Professor of Linguistics Department of Communication, Arts and Language (DELAC) UNIJUI Ijui, RS Brasil mcoimbra at main.unijui.tche.br From Edy.Veneziano at pse.unige.ch Tue May 18 15:48:33 1999 From: Edy.Veneziano at pse.unige.ch (Edy Veneziano) Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 17:48:33 +0200 Subject: teletubbies in Brazilian Portuguese Message-ID: I have never watched Teletubbies but I enjoyed the discussion nevertheless. One thing puzzles me however and the last message that came through made me more aware of it: "It seems that the Brazilian tv network responsible for the broadcasting and translation adjusted the language to an older age range (maybe 3 to 4 years-old). " There seems to be an implicit assumption here that for language to be 'interesting', 'attractive', 'good' or whatever on these lines, for a child of a given age it should present characteristics similar to those the children of that age group are supposed to produce. Am I overinterpreting? or is there something like that (at least in the mind of some of the discussants)? This would be a new notion for me and I would like to know more about it. Edy Veneziano ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Edy Veneziano Universit? Nancy 2 and Universit? Paris V-CNRS ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ From Eak31852 at aol.com Fri May 21 22:54:17 1999 From: Eak31852 at aol.com (Eak31852 at aol.com) Date: Fri, 21 May 1999 18:54:17 EDT Subject: age targets for TV language Message-ID: RE: EdyVeneziano's question about the assumption that interesting language needs to reflect charachteristics of the viewers... There was early popular press that the Teletubbies were unique in targetting a younger audience (than, say Sesame Street) and so, reflected earlier language development characteristics. Early reports claimed the language was "babbling". I am curious too whether anyone in this discussion is making the assumption that early language users are more interested in hearing "their own tongue." -- That seems to have been an assumption of the TV programmers, in this case. The original question was based on Shanley's class assignment "Is the Teletubbies language helpful, detrimental, or neither to language development?" Elizabeth K. From Edy.Veneziano at pse.unige.ch Sat May 22 10:25:08 1999 From: Edy.Veneziano at pse.unige.ch (Edy Veneziano) Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 12:25:08 +0200 Subject: teletubbies in Holland Message-ID: Thank you Lise for this further comments. Let me make my point clearer however. What is more interesting or attractive to children of different ages is an empirical question that can find an answer relatively easily (and here, given the differences you describe, we may have a cheap (for us) possibility to look into the question). However, on a theoretical basis, I wonder why child's developmental 'levels' of language, instead of caregiver's , were taken into consideration and why some of us seem to accept it in a 'matter of fact' way (I may be wrong on this point though, whence my question). It seems to me that Shanley's original class assignment should include this issue in its treatment. Edy Veneziano Lise Fontaine wrote: > > >"It seems that the Brazilian tv network responsible for the > >broadcasting and translation adjusted the language to an older age range > >(maybe 3 to 4 years-old). " > > I recently met a family from Holland and since we both had young children > for some reason Teletubbies came up and they said that they had purchased > the BBC version since they found that in the Dutch version the language was > too "baby-ish" > > it seems then that when prepared for different languages, producers have > changed the language level or perhaps it is cultural, what is considered > "too young" for the children watching the program. > > also, the language levels in the French version at least vary from the > youngest Teletubbie (Po) to the oldest (Tinkie Winkie), I suppose in an > attempt to mark stages in development. Has anyone else noticed this in > other versions? > > >There seems to be an implicit assumption here that for language to be > '>interesting', 'attractive', 'good' or whatever on these lines, for a > >child of a given age it should present characteristics similar to those > >the children of that age group are supposed to produce. > > In the case of the Dutch family, they wanted a program for their child that > represented an 'older' child's language, or at least in their view. > > Lise From Thomas.Klee at newcastle.ac.uk Fri May 28 13:28:10 1999 From: Thomas.Klee at newcastle.ac.uk (Thomas Klee) Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 13:28:10 +0000 Subject: Post at University of Newcastle upon Tyne Message-ID: University of Newcastle upon Tyne DEPARTMENT OF SPEECH LECTURER OR SENIOR LECTURER IN PAEDIATRIC SPEECH-LANGUAGE PATHOLOGY ?16,655 -?34,464 p.a. We would like to appoint an active researcher with expertise in developmental speech and language disorders, who will contribute to the department's research profile (graded 4 in the 1996 RAE), and who can demonstrate a strong commitment to the department's goal of providing high quality education in Speech & Language Therapy at undergraduate and postgraduate levels and in the department's expanding Continuing Professional Development programmes. The department has excellent resources including paediatric and adult clinical facilities and teaching and research laboratories. A clinical qualification in speech and language therapy would be an advantage. The post is available from 1 September 1999 or as soon as possible thereafter. Informal inquiries may be made to either Professor Barbara Dodd (b.j.dodd at ncl.ac.uk) or Dr Thomas Klee, Head of Department (thomas.klee at ncl.ac.uk). Telephone: 0191 222 7388. The department's website is at www.newcastle.ac.uk/speech. For further information please telephone +44 (0) 191 222 8834 (24 hour answerphone) or fax. +44 (0) 191 222 5694 quoting Ref. E030 or write to: Human Resources Section (Ref. E030), University of Newcastle, 1 Park Terrace, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, England. Closing date for applications is 29 June 1999. From macw at cmu.edu Mon May 31 21:31:27 1999 From: macw at cmu.edu (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Mon, 31 May 1999 17:31:27 -0400 Subject: new corpus on children exposed to cocaine in utero Message-ID: Dear Info-CHILDES, I am happy to announce the addition to CHILDES of a corpus of samples of the language of children exposed to cocaine in utero. The data come from Margo Malakoff of Harvey Mudd College and Linda Mayes of Yale University. The following is a description of this new data set. It can be found in /clinical/malakoff.sit. Please note that I have decided to use the name "clinical" rather than "impaired" to refer to the directory of language from clinical subtypes in order to avoid leading people to make implicit judgments regarding the nature of the language of clinical subjects. --Brian MacWhinney A sample of 74 infants (46 drug cocaine-and-other-drug-exposed and 28 non-cocaine-exposed) were randomly selected from a large longitudinal study of the effects of prenatal cocaine exposure on infant and child development. The mean age of the cocaine-and-other-drug-exposed group was 24 months, 5 days (range from 22.9 to 26.1 months); the mean age of the non-cocaine-exposed group was 24 months, 4 days (range from 22.9 to 26.8 months). There were 19 boys and 27 girls in the cocaine-and-other-drug-exposed group and 10 boys and 18 girls in the non-cocaine-exposed group. All children were accompanied by mothers. Maternal cocaine exposure status was determined either by self-report of use during pregnancy or by a positive urine screen at a prenatal visit or at delivery. Non-exposed status was ascertained by maternal and infant urine toxicology and a negative maternal history of cocaine use during pregnancy and at the time of delivery. All infants in this sample remained in their mothers? care after delivery. The sample was predominantly African American (85% cocaine-and-other-drug-exposed and 82% non-cocaine-exposed). Most women were in their twenties, however cocaine-and-other-drug-using mothers were significantly older (mean age = 28.5) than non-cocaine-exposed mothers (mean age = 24.9) , F(1,71) = 12.74, p < .001. The majority of the women in both groups were single mothers. There were no differences in the proportion of mothers in each group receiving prenatal care, and the majority of women in both groups had at least one prenatal visit. Additional background information on children and mothers is available from Malakoff, M. E., Mayes, L. C., Schottenfeld, R.S., & Howell, S. (1999) Language production at 24 month-old inner city children of cocaine-and-other-drug-using mothers. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology., 20. From TJimerson at aol.com Mon May 31 17:25:31 1999 From: TJimerson at aol.com (TJimerson at aol.com) Date: Mon, 31 May 1999 13:25:31 EDT Subject: theory of mind measures Message-ID: Hello everyone. I am interested in measuring the "theory of mind" of young children (ages 2-6). I am primarily interested in measures that might be appropriate for assessing theory of mind in mother-child interactions during free-play and semi-structured teaching tasks. Does anyone out there have any good leads? Unfortunately, most of the measures I have come across are designed as theory of mind tasks. Any feedback would be much appreciated. Thanks! Tiffany Jimerson University of South Florida at Tampa From macw at cmu.edu Sat May 29 17:20:25 1999 From: macw at cmu.edu (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Sat, 29 May 1999 13:20:25 -0400 Subject: adult bilingual corpus (Chinese-Hungarian) Message-ID: Dear Info-CHILDES, I am happy to announce the addition of another corpus of adult second language acquisition data to CHILDES. This corpus was collected in Hungary by Juliet Langman of the Division of Bicultural-Bilingual Studies at the Universtiy of Texas at San Antonio. The corpus can be found in langman.sit and langman.zip in the /bilingual directory of CHILDES. Following is the documentation for the corpus. --Brian MacWhinney **** This corpus is made up of 10 files consisting of interviews conducted in 1994 with 11 Chinese immigrants living in Hungary. The bulk of the conversation is in Hungarian, although in the case of those who speak English there is also English, and in the case of one transcript (KIN10) there are significant amounts of Chinese (with a Hungarian translation in a %tra dependent tier). Interviews focused on issues related to their arrival in Hungary as well as their daily life activities. With the exception of KIN2 and KIN10 none of the subjects had had formal training in Hungarian. Interviewers were the researcher, as well as three different Hungarian undergraduates. Data were collected with two purposes in mind: the analyses of communicative strategies among adult second language learners learning in a non-structured environment, and the analysis of the acquisition of morphology of an agglutinative language. From shanley at bu.edu Mon May 31 00:01:32 1999 From: shanley at bu.edu (Shanley E. M. Allen) Date: Sun, 30 May 1999 20:01:32 -0400 Subject: summary of "language in Teletubbies" Message-ID: A sincere thank you to everyone who responded to my post concerning research on language use in the Teletubbies program. Since most of the discussion took place on the list, I'll just highlight the main results and share a couple of off-list communications. WEB SITES The web sites I mentioned in my post are these: PBS: http://www.pbs.org/teletubbies/ BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/teletubbies/ They both have general information about the show, interviews with the producers and others, a list of frequently asked questions, and pointers to some newspaper articles about the show. There is also a page devoted to Teletubbies on Parenthood Web: http://www.parenthoodweb.com There are hundreds of other web pages having to do with Teletubbies, but most of them are trying to sell products or talking about Tinky-Winky's sexual orientation. These three were the most helpful I found (though I only looked at about 50 of the pages that looked most promising from the information on AltaVista). EH-OH vs. UH-OH Several people mentioned the TT's pronunciation of eh-oh and uh-oh. The concensus, with which I agree, is that there are two distinct forms - "eh-oh" meaning "hello", and "uh-oh" meaning "oops" or something similar. I agree with people that these are sometimes difficult to distinguish. Apparently the French version also uses "eh-oh" rather than a form of "bonjour". TELETUBBY PHONOLOGY Shelley Velleman's student Sarah Schmit has written a paper about the phonology of the Teletubbies. She claims that while much of the phonology is similar to that found in child language, some is more advanced than would be seen in children of the target age for this show (e.g. accuracy of consonant clusters), and some is unlike typical child phonology (e.g. odd substitutions for liquids). Miriam Coimbra writes that Teletubby phonology in Brazilian Portuguese is more like that of 3-4-year-olds than that of younger children, that it shows some aspects that are more advanced than would be expected (e.g. consonant clusters), and does not seem to show the deviances Schmit finds in English. IS THIS LANGUAGE HARMFUL TO CHILD LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT? Most respondents - including mothers and child language experts - agreed that the Teletubby language will probably not have a negative effect on children's language learnng. Alison Henry mentioned that one of her students did a project on the Teletubbies arguing that the language was very like that of children who would be the age of younger siblings of the viewers, and therefore had no more impact on acquisition than hearing younger children speaking. Mabel Rice provided some very helpful references to work on language in Sesame Street, which showed that the language used in SS had a facilitative effect on child language learning, with specific mention of vocabulary development. She also noted her observations about TT based on the shows she reviewed for PBS. Cliff Pye also mentioned that there has been quite a lot of research on the language effects of Seseme Street, including work by John Wright and Aletha Houston. Lynn Santelmann noted a paper on the effects of language in the Barney show in a recent cognitive or developmental psychology journal. She notes that the article claimed that the repitition and other features of language used on Barney were beneficial to children's language development (or at least the group who watched Barney episodes did somewhat better on their language measures than those that didn't). I haven't yet been able to locate this article. Lois Bloom provided a summary of her comments on TT for ABC News. Jean Berko Gleason and Paula Menyuk provided a copy of a Boston Globe article on TT for which they and Steven Pinker were interviewed. It is appended below. Many linguist parents remarked how much their children enjoyed watching TT. Dominic Watt noted that using TT pictures and dolls as an elicitation tool has been very helpful in his experiments on child phonology, since children love to talk about the Teletubbies. Julie Watt suggested contacting David Buckingham who does much work on children and British TV. She notes that he is Reader in Education at the Institute of Education or may be contacted through the British Film Institute. Thanks once again for everyone who took the time to respond to my question. The responses will be very helpful in providing material for my class debate. Best, Shanley Allen. ************************************************************************ BOSTON GLOBE ARTICLE Copyright 1998 Globe Newspaper Company The Boston Globe April 5, 1998, Sunday, City Edition SECTION: FOCUS; Pg. D5 HEADLINE: 'Teletubbies' need no translation; THE WORD / JAN FREEMAN BYLINE: By Jan Freeman, Globe Staff BODY: Tomorrow is "Teletubbies" time in American living rooms, as the hit kiddie show arrives, trailing clouds of linguistic controversy, from its native England. The Teletubbies themselves, four roly-poly toddler characters played by adults in pastel Dr. Dentons, look harmless enough, despite their alien-style antennas. But they caused a furor in Britain by speaking more or less genuine toddler talk - cooter for scooter, tustard for custard, eh-oh for hello, wabbit for rabbit. ("Teletubbies" itself is pronounced telly-tubbies, a play on the British slang for television; the characters' tubby tummies are equipped with little telly screens.) Because the show is aimed at children as young as 12 to 18 months, some parents were horrified by the Teletubbies' toddlerese. In response to their distress, the baby talk was toned down last summer; and in the PBS broadcasts, tubby talk will have an American accent. But American parents, too, are sure to be wondering: Should characters created for kids who are just mastering language be allowed to use baby talk? It's a concern Robert Conway of Belmont raised earlier this year when he wrote to ask why Cookie Monster is allowed to inflict his ungrammatical "Me want cookie!" on the ears of babes. An educational program like "Sesame Street," he thought, should set a good example by hewing to standard grammar. But psychologists who study language acquisition say parents can relax: Baby talk is universal, baby talk is useful, and there's no reason to think hearing it on television will impede a child's language learning. "Children learn early on that different people talk in different ways," says Jean Berko Gleason, a professor of psychology at Boston University. "It is OK for them to hear Cookie Monster say 'Me want cookie.' That's how Cookie Monster talks." Baby talk won't get in the way as long as children also hear "a good deal of language that is appropriate to their age and stage," says Gleason. Her BU colleague Paula Menyuk agrees: "There is no evidence . . . that caregivers who use baby talk more have infants who are retarded in their language development." Steven Pinker of MIT, author of "The Language Instinct," is even more vehement: "The chance of kids' language being corrupted by the loathsome Teletubbies is nil," he says. Children not only can recognize baby talk, they are generally "pretty good at segregating language input by speaker and compartmentalizing the different varieties." In other words, babies are smarter than we think about language; they know that "tubby talk" and Cookie Monsterese are not the languages grown-ups speak. Today's small "Teletubbies" fans will not go off to college saying wabbit, any more than their Looney Tuned-in parents did. A few child-rearing authorities still dislike baby talk, mainly on aesthetic grounds, it seems, but their numbers are dwindling as science topples their prejudices. A study published last year, for instance, found that mothers speaking unrelated languages produced the same kind of baby talk when speaking to their infants, exaggerating certain vowel sounds to give them extra clarity. And far from discouraging baby talk, one popular child-rearing book gives detailed instructions on doing it, and cautions parents not to let self-consciousness stop them from babbling and cooing. Better too much coochy-coochy-coo, it seems, than not enough. If parents still want to worry about the Teletubbies invasion, the British experience suggests it's the older children they should keep an eye on. "Teletubbies" is a trippy sort of show, and young ravers have allegedly been coming home >from their all-night parties to groove on its psychedelically absurdist landscape. Despite the BBC's ban on reproducing copyrighted images or sound, the World Wide Web is dense with fan sites for decoding Tubbies arcana and debating " 'Teletubbies': Dangerous subversives or harmless drivel?" For babies and toddlers, the most dangerous thing about the program is probably sitting around watching it. Last month, yet another study linked obesity in children with the amount of TV they watch; America seems to be producing enough home-grown teletubbies without the encouragement of the brand-name British imports. What's the word? Write or e-mail yours to Jan Freeman at The Boston Globe, PO Box 2378, Boston, MA 02107-2378; freeman(at sign)globe.com. Please include a hometown and phone number. ************************************************************************ ***************************************************** Shanley E. M. Allen, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Boston University Graduate Program in Applied Linguistics Developmental Studies Department, School of Education 605 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA, 02215, U.S.A. phone: +1-617-358-0354 fax: +1-617-353-3924 e-mail: shanley at bu.edu ***************************************************** From snehab at utdallas.edu Fri May 28 22:09:17 1999 From: snehab at utdallas.edu (Sneha V Bharadwaj) Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 17:09:17 -0500 Subject: Sp. ed. schools Message-ID: Dear members, I know of a 4-yr old boy (adopted from Romania when he was 2 yrs old). He needs a lot of work in the area of language, especially phonology. His parents are moving to New York. It would be really helpful if anyone of you could recommend a special school for this boy. Thanks in advance to all your replies. -SB