From vickyjanssen at hotmail.com Sat Dec 2 10:13:27 2000 From: vickyjanssen at hotmail.com (vicky janssen) Date: Sat, 2 Dec 2000 10:13:27 -0000 Subject: Turntaking and autonomy in young children Message-ID: Hello everybody, I'm a student in speech and language pathology, and I would like to have some information about turntaking and autonomy in children from 1-3 years old. With tt. I mean a vocalisation and/or gesture made by the child, if the child intends to communicatie with it. Autonomy is tt., but with autonomy the child opens a new subject in the interaction and/or gives information even when the interactionpartner did not ask for it. If you have some articles, or titles from articles and books, they are very welcome! Bye! Vicky Janssen. _____________________________________________________________________________________ Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com From inger.moen at ilf.uio.no Sat Dec 2 10:15:09 2000 From: inger.moen at ilf.uio.no (inger.moen at ilf.uio.no) Date: Sat, 2 Dec 2000 11:15:09 +0100 Subject: Turntaking and autonomy in young children In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Dear "vicky janssen" This is an automatic reply. Feel free to send additional mail, as only this one notice will be generated. The following is a prerecorded message, sent for ingerm at ilf.uio.no: ==================================================== Inger Moen is out of her office during the period November 28 til December 3. From Edy.Veneziano at clsh.univ-nancy2.fr Mon Dec 4 09:00:21 2000 From: Edy.Veneziano at clsh.univ-nancy2.fr (Edy Veneziano) Date: Mon, 4 Dec 2000 10:00:21 +0100 Subject: Reminiscence of Hermina Sinclair de-Zwart Message-ID: Those who are interested may find a "Reminiscence of Hermina Sinclair de-Zwart at this WEB site: http://www.piaget.org/GE/GE-ToC.html From bpearson at comdis.umass.edu Tue Dec 5 03:31:06 2000 From: bpearson at comdis.umass.edu (Barbara Zurer Pearson) Date: Mon, 4 Dec 2000 22:31:06 -0500 Subject: Updating your listing on the CHILDES Memberlist Message-ID: Dear ChiPeople, I've been using the CHILDES member list lately to get people's addresses. It's pretty handy, but I'm also realizing how hard it is to keep it up-to- date. When I sent to one person and had it bounce, I decided to check my own listing--and of course there was a mistake in it, too. Can I suggest that we all check our listings and make sure they're current? http://childes.psy.cmu.edu/ then Membership list then Chi People then "member" "babbling" (then search on yourself). The permissions are set for you to go into the "Form View" and "Edit" your record by yourself. No need to go through the webmaster.. If you have any problem with it, though, email Kelly Sacco sacco at cmu.edu She'll help you out. Great (and another thank you to Brian for yet another helpful service). Cheers, Barbara ****************************************** Barbara Zurer Pearson, Ph.D. Project Manager, NIH Working Group on AAE Department of Communication Disorders University of Massachusetts, Amherst 117 Arnold House Amherst MA 01003 413-545-5023 fax 545-0803 bpearson at comdis.umass.edu http://www.umass.edu/aae/ From mboehning at yahoo.de Wed Dec 6 09:54:09 2000 From: mboehning at yahoo.de (=?iso-8859-1?q?Marita=20Boehning?=) Date: Wed, 6 Dec 2000 10:54:09 +0100 Subject: Position available Message-ID: The University of Potsdam offers the part-time position of a PhD Student/ Postdoc/ Junior Researcher in a research project on perceptual, cognitive, and neurophysiological factors in impaired and non-impaired language acquisition. Applicants should have: - A university degree in Linguistics, Developmental or Experimental Psychology or related subjects - Experience with empirical work in the domain of language acquisition - Knowledge of the methods for studying speech perception in early infancy and childhood - An interest in working in an interdisciplinary group (linguistics, neurosciences, psychology) -Excellent skills in German (spoken and written) Initial appointment will be for the period of two years with the potential of renewal for a third year. Starting date: as soon as possible The salary is according to the normal range for researchers ('wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter', BAT-O IIa/2) in Germany, with details depending on age and marital status. Rank of Job: PhD student/ Postdoc/ Junior Researcher Areas Required: First Language Acquisition Other Desired Areas: Speech Perception, Language Processing University or Organization: University of Potsdam Department: Linguisti Country: Germany Final Date of Application: 31.12.2000 Contact: weissenb at rz.uni-potsdam.de Address for Applications: Prof. Juergen Weissenborn University of Potsdam Linguistics Department P.O. Box 60 15 53 14415 Potsdam Germany ----------------- Tel. +49-331-977 2932 Fax +49-331-977 2095 __________________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Gesendet von Yahoo! Mail - http://mail.yahoo.de Gratis zum Millionär! - http://10millionenspiel.yahoo.de From plahey at mindspring.com Wed Dec 6 16:14:49 2000 From: plahey at mindspring.com (Peg Lahey) Date: Wed, 6 Dec 2000 11:14:49 -0500 Subject: Fw: NEW FOUNDATION TO FUND PROJECTS Message-ID: NEW PRIVATE FOUNDATION TO FUND PROJECTS RELATED TO DEVELOPMENTAL LANGUAGE DISORDERS December 6, 2000 Roger Bamford and Denise Lahey today announce the formation of a private non-profit foundation, the Bamford-Lahey Children's Foundation, that will conduct and support programs designed to enhance the linguistic, cognitive, and social development of children. For the next few years, the Foundation will focus on children with Developmental Language Disorders and will target projects designed to facilitate the language development of children with language problems. To act as president and run the Foundation, Mr. and Mrs. Bamford have appointed Dr. Margaret Lahey, who is known for her research and writings about children's language disorders. Objectives and Activities The immediate objectives of the Foundation are to: a.. Develop and evaluate innovative strategies for enhancing language learning in children with developmental language disorders b.. Stimulate research on the application of technology to language assessment and intervention c.. Increase understanding of how certain aspects of health, particularly nutrition, may influence cognitive, linguistic, and social development. To accomplish these objectives, the Foundation expects to: a.. Run conferences to disseminate information to professionals and parents b.. Hold workshops to stimulate research in areas related to its objectives c.. Conduct and fund research in areas related to its objectives Many of these activities will be carried out with the assistance of independent contractors who will be paid by the Foundation. for example, funding will be available for persons interested in initiating and directing a research or development project related to the Foundation's objectives. Guidelines for Obtaining Funding Detailed guidelines for obtaining funding are described on the Foundation web site www.Bamford-Lahey.org. Qualified persons are encouraged to submit a letter-of-inquiry if they are interested in working for the Foundation on an activity related to its immediate objectives. For the first year of operation, contracts will be considered for amounts of up to $50,000. In addition, the foundation will consider making one or two small grants ($20,000 or less) a year through other non-profit organizations (e.g., universities, hospitals, public schools). Questions, letters-of-inquiry, and comments can be sent to info at Bamford-Lahey.org Advisory Panel To provide input in various areas, Dr. Lahey as assembled an advisory panel with relevant expertise. The panel includes Denise Lahey, Lois Bloom, Ph.D., Jan Edwards, Ph.D., Marc Fey, Ph.D., Henry Lahey, Ph.D., Julie Masterson, Ph.D., and Fred Pescatore, M.D., M.P.H.. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From deak at COGSCI.ucsd.edu Wed Dec 6 19:51:44 2000 From: deak at COGSCI.ucsd.edu (Gedeon =?iso-8859-1?Q?De=E1k?=) Date: Wed, 6 Dec 2000 11:51:44 -0800 Subject: position search announcement Message-ID: The Department of Cognitive Science at UCSD is searching for an assistant professor. Please circulate the announcement below to any interested colleagues. FACULTY POSITION IN COGNITIVE SCIENCE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO The Department of Cognitive Science at the University of California, San Diego invites applications for a faculty position at the assistant professor level (tenure-track) starting July 1, 2001, the salary commensurate with the experience of the successful applicant and based on the UC pay scale. The department of cognitive science at UCSD was the first of its kind in the world, and, as part of an exceptional scientific community, it remains a dominant influence in the field it helped to create. The department is truly interdisciplinary, with a faculty whose interests span anthropology, computer science, human development, linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy, psychology, and sociology. The department is looking for a top-caliber junior researcher in cognitive science. Applicants must have a Ph.D. (or ABD). A broad interdisciplinary perspective and experience with multiple methodologies will be highly valued. Women and minorities are encouraged to apply. The University of California, San Diego is an affirmative action/equal opportunity employer. All applications received by January 1, 2001 will receive thorough consideration until position is filled. Candidates should include a vita, reprints, a short letter describing their background and interests, and names and addresses of at least three references to: University of California, San Diego Faculty Search Committee Department of Cognitive Science 0515-OB 9500 Gilman Drive La Jolla, CA 92093-0515 From lsc at th.com.br Wed Dec 6 11:40:34 2000 From: lsc at th.com.br (Leonor Scliar Cabral) Date: Wed, 6 Dec 2000 09:40:34 -0200 Subject: compounds Message-ID: Dear Colleagues, One of my students is doing research on children's lexical creation of compounds. Could anyone help me with bibliographic references on the subject? Thank you. Prof. Dr. Leonor Scliar-Cabral From centenoj at stjohns.edu Thu Dec 7 04:57:14 2000 From: centenoj at stjohns.edu (Jose G. Centeno) Date: Wed, 6 Dec 2000 23:57:14 -0500 Subject: No subject Message-ID: I have a student interested in doing a literature review of studies on children acquiring Yiddish, particularly phonology. Any pointers on (1) research on normal and/or disordered Yiddish-speaking children and (2) publications on Yiddish phonology will be appreciated. Thanks. Jose Centeno St. John's University ( centenoj at stjohns.edu ) ___________________________________________________ Jose G. Centeno, Ph.D., CCC-SLP Speech-Language Pathology & Audiology Program Dept. of Speech, Communication Sciences, & Theatre St. John's University 8000 Utopia Parkway Jamaica, NY 11439 Tel: 718-990-2629, 6452 Fax: 718-990-5878 ___________________________________________________ From ann.dowker at psy.ox.ac.uk Fri Dec 8 14:00:31 2000 From: ann.dowker at psy.ox.ac.uk (Ann Dowker) Date: Fri, 8 Dec 2000 14:00:31 +0000 Subject: compounds In-Reply-To: <3A2E25B2.CAACCFE0@th.com.br> Message-ID: Eve Clark has done a lot of work on this topic; e.g. E.V. Clark: The Lexicon in Acquisition; Cambridge University Press, 1993 E.V. Clark, B.F. Hecht and RC Mulford: Coining complex compounds in English: affixes and word order; Linguistics, 1986, 24, 7-29 E.V. Clark and R.A. Berman: Types of linguistic knowledge: interpreting and producing compound nouns; Journal of Child Language, 1987, 3, 547-567 E.V. Clark: Lexical creativity in French speaking children; Cahiers de Pscyhologie Cognitive/ Current Psychology of Cognition, 1998, 17, 513-530 (French children, like French adults, coin fewer compounds than their English-speaking counterparts). Other papers that might be of interest include: G.M. Gottfried: Comprehending compounds: evidence for metaphoric skill?; Journal of Child Language, 1997, 24, 163-186 H. Van der Lely and V. Christian: Lexical word formation in children with grammatical SLI; Cognition, 2000, 75, 33-63 D. Vasanta and P. Sailaja: Making sense of compound nouns: a study of word relatedness on Telugu; Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 1999, 28, 331-346 J. Windsor: The functions of novel word compounds; Journal of Child Language, 1993, 20, 119-138 Hope some of these are useful, Ann On Wed, 6 Dec 2000, Leonor Scliar Cabral wrote: > Dear Colleagues, > One of my students is doing research on children's lexical creation of > compounds. > Could anyone help me with bibliographic references on the subject? > Thank you. > Prof. Dr. > Leonor Scliar-Cabral > > > From nratner at hesp.umd.edu Fri Dec 8 16:55:39 2000 From: nratner at hesp.umd.edu (Nan Ratner) Date: Fri, 8 Dec 2000 11:55:39 -0500 Subject: data on elderly and Alzheimer's speakers Message-ID: A student of mine is planning to do a thesis on characteristics of narratives (Frogs) produced by normal elderly and Alzheimer's speakers. Does anyone know of any data currently available on this topic? Nan Nan Bernstein Ratner, Ed.D. Chairman Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences University of Maryland College Park, MD 20742 301-405-4217 301-314-2023 (FAX) Steering Committee Coordinator, Special Interest Division 4 : Fluency and Fluency Disorders American Speech-Language and Hearing Association nratner at hesp.umd.edu From msyonata at pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il Fri Dec 8 17:37:42 2000 From: msyonata at pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il (Yonata Levy) Date: Fri, 8 Dec 2000 19:37:42 +0200 Subject: data on elderly and Alzheimer's speakers Message-ID: Hi, A student of mine is in the final stages of her dissertation on language in Hebrew speaking AD patients. She is mostly concerned with formal grammatical vs. semantic features and uses characteristics of Hebrew to examine the profile they show but she has also done some narratives (NOT the Frog, however). If you give me more detail I'll see how relevant our work is to yours. I too am interested in work along those line that is currently being conducted. is anyone doing that kind of work? Yonata. From eclark at psych.stanford.edu Fri Dec 8 17:44:30 2000 From: eclark at psych.stanford.edu (Eve V. Clark) Date: Fri, 8 Dec 2000 09:44:30 -0800 Subject: Next Child Language Research Forum 2002 Message-ID: All: this is to announce that the next Child Language Research Forum will be in April 2002. The date will be fixed in the next few months, and the web-site at CSLI updated too. (Abstracts for that meeting will therefore be due in early January 2002.) We are making some general changes in the format of the meeting, and also in its timetable. For the immediate future, we would like to devote each biennial meeting to a specific topic or area in studies of language acquisition, with special emphasis on interdisciplinary contributions. If you have suggestions about specific topics you think would benefit from discussion at a future meeting, please email me Eve Clark Organizing Committee Child Language Research Forum ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Eve V. Clark Professor of Linguistics & Symbolic Systems Department of Linguistics Stanford University Stanford, CA 94305-2150 USA Tel. 650 / 723-4284 (725-1563) Fax. 650 / 723-5666 EM: eclark at psych.stanford.edu ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 1186 bytes Desc: not available URL: From asanord at ling.gu.se Fri Dec 8 18:35:16 2000 From: asanord at ling.gu.se (Asa Nordqvist) Date: Fri, 8 Dec 2000 19:35:16 +0100 Subject: Cochlear implants Message-ID: Dear info-childers, I and my colleague Kerstin Nelfelt at Gothenburg university, Sweden, will run a project (starting in January 2001) where will follow and examine the langauge development by some Swedish young deaf children that have got Cochlear implants. We are very interested in getting in contact with researchers that have experiences from similar projects in other countries and languages. Thanks in advance, Åsa Nordqvist ********************************************************************* AAsa Nordqvist PhD-student Dept of Linguistics phone: +46-31-7734627 Goeteborg University fax: +46-31-7734853 Box 200 e-mail: asanord at ling.gu.se SE-405 30 Goeteborg http://www.ling.gu.se/~asanord/ Sweden ********************************************************************* From macw at cmu.edu Sun Dec 10 07:53:49 2000 From: macw at cmu.edu (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Sun, 10 Dec 2000 15:53:49 +0800 Subject: Position at Rutgers Message-ID: Dear Info-CHILDES, I am posting this for Karin Stromswold who is having mail problems. Please reply to her at Rutgers, not to me. Thanks. --Brian MacWhinney The Department of Psychology at Rutgers University-New Brunswick invites applications for three tenure-track assistant professorships for Fall 2001 or 2000 in the areas of behavioral neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and health. Individuals at the Associate level could be considered in special cases. COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY: We seek an individual who will expand upon or complement our current strengths in the areas of concepts and cognitive development, visual perception, reasoning, language, comparative cognition, and computational/formal models. Candidates will be expected to teach both graduate and undergraduate courses. They may be considered for membership in the Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science and contribute to a rapidly developing cross-institution program in cognitive neuroscience. BIOPSYCHOLOGY AND BEHAVIORAL NEUROSCIENCE: We seek an individual who will expand upon or complement our current strengths in learning, memory, motivation, and experience-related forms of neuroplasticity. The specific area of research expertise is open, although candidates with interests in sensory systems, development and regenerative plasticity, molecular genetics, or neuropsychopharmacology are particularly attractive. Candidates should have postdoctoral experience and will be expected to teach both graduate and undergraduate courses. They will be considered for appointment in the Rutgers Center for Collaborative Neuroscience. HEALTH: We seek someone with expertise in the following areas: 1. Research identifying biological mechanisms that account for disease-related effects of psychological stress, coping, social relationships, and personality. II. Research on the mechanisms or modification of health promoting and health-damaging behaviors. III. Research on adaptation to physical disease and treatment. Expertise in the genetic or neuropsychological factors in physical disease, and/or in the use of biostatistics and multivariate models used in health research, would be an advantage. Please send a curriculum vitae, statement of research and teaching interests, a selection of papers, and three letters of recommendation to the appropriate Search Committee, Department of Psychology, 152 Frelinghuysen Road, Piscataway, NJ 08854- 8020. A review of applications will begin by December 10, although applications arriving after this date will be considered. Rutgers University is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity employer. From eclark at psych.stanford.edu Mon Dec 11 23:13:53 2000 From: eclark at psych.stanford.edu (Eve Clark) Date: Mon, 11 Dec 2000 15:13:53 -0800 Subject: International Symposium / CALL for research & papers Message-ID: Appel à communication Colloque International Acquisition et construction du sens dans une perspective interlangue Université René Descartes, Paris V 14-15 décembre 2001 Organisation : Claire Martinot avec le soutien de la Cellule de Recherche Fondamentale en Linguistique Française et Comparée (CRFLFC, Centre Tesnière de l'Université de Franche-Comté, EA 2283) et du Laboratoire d'Etudes sur l'Acquisition et la Pathologie du Langage chez l'enfant (LEAPLE, UMR 8606 du CNRS) (The English version follows below the French version) Au cours de l'acquisition de sa langue maternelle, l'enfant s'approprie les énoncés de la langue en les transformant partiellement. Ces transformations, qui s'appliquent aux formes linguistiques, modifient le plus souvent le sens de l'énoncé de départ. Ce processus de reformulation par reprise-transformation détermine en grande partie l'acquisition en particulier lors de la période des acquisitions tardives et il en constitue une trace, visible dans les productions enfantines. On postule que ce mode d'acquisition par reformulation ne se réalise pas de la même façon selon les langues parce que les relations entre le lexique et la grammaire diffèrent d'une langue à l'autre. Une analyse interlangue des modes de reformulation permettrait d'une part d'évaluer l'impact de chaque langue maternelle sur les acquisitions, et d'autre part de tenter une généralisation de l'analyse des reformulations en tant qu'outil de description des productions, dans le domaine relativement peu décrit des acquisitions tardives. Afin que le colloque permette de confronter des analyses comparables à partir de productions enfantines dans différentes langues, on souhaiterait que les communiquants présentent leurs résultats à partir du même protocole de recherche, déjà expérimenté sur le français (le protocole, en anglais ou en français, et le texte du conte Deux amis malheureux, traduit en anglais, en allemand, en italien ou en hébreu sont à demander à Claire Martinot : cmartinot at aol.com ; le conte traduit en arabe est à demander à Amr Ibrahim : amr.ibrahim1 at libertysurf.fr , ainsi que le protocole en arabe).Toute autre proposition de traduction du conte et du protocole de recherche serait vivement appréciée, nous la mettrons alors à la disposition d'autres chercheurs éventuels dans la même langue de façon à ce qu'il n'y ait qu'une seule traduction par langue. La deuxième circulaire fera le point sur les langues disponibles. Il s'agirait de comparer les modes de restitution du même conte produit par des enfants d'âges différents (environ de 4 à 12 ans) et d'analyser toutes les procédures de reformulations attestées entre les séquences du conte et les séquences produites par les enfants. On souhaite aussi que ce colloque soit l'occasion de recherches portant sur des langues non encore ou peu décrites, du point de vue de leur acquisition, comme c'est le cas de l'arabe par exemple. Informations Les propositions de communication comporteront 800 à 1000 mots. Elles exposeront la problématique envisagée de façon précise ainsi que la langue sur laquelle porte la recherche. Les propositions sont à envoyer par courrier électronique ou postal en 3 exemplaires, dont deux anonymes, à Claire Martinot ou Amr Ibrahim avant le 1er mars 2001. Une réponse est prévue fin mars. Une deuxième circulaire sera envoyée courant avril et donnera des informations concernant le transport et l'hébergement. Les communications (40 mn) auront lieu en séance plénière. Elles se feront de préférence en français. Si un exposé a lieu dans une autre langue, on remercie les communiquants de prévoir une synthèse de leur travail en français. On prévoit la publication d'un livre - les textes retenus pour le recueil auront été préalablement soumis à un comité de lecture. Participation : 200 F pour les enseignants (gratuit pour les étudiants). Comité scientifique : Michel Barbot, Université Marc Bloch, Strasbourg II Ruth A.Berman, Université de Tel Aviv Eve V.Clark, Université de Stanford Maya Hickmann, Laboratoire Cognition et Développement, CNRS, Université René Descartes, Paris V. Christian Hudelot, Laboratoire d'Etudes sur l'Acquisition et la Pathologie du Langage chez l'enfant, CNRS, Université René Descartes, Paris V. Amr H.Ibrahim, Université de Franche-comté, CRFLFC du Centre Tesnière. Anne Salazar-Orvig, Université René Descartes, Paris V. Coordonnées des personnes à contacter pour l'organisation matérielle et scientifique : Claire Martinot : cmartinot at aol.com 8, rue de Verdun, esc.12 F - 94500 Champigny-sur-Marne (France) Amr Ibrahim : amr.ibrahim1 at libertysurf.fr 5, rue Louis-Léon Lepoutre F - 94130 Nogent-sur-Marne (France) ==================================================================== Call for papers International Symposium Acquisition and construction of meaning in crosslinguistic perspective Université René Descartes, Paris V 14-15 December 2001 Organizer: Claire Martinot with the support of La Cellule de Recherche Fondamentale en Linguistique française et Comparée (CRFLFC, Centre Tesnière of the University of Franche-Comté, Group for Basic Research in French and Comparative Linguistics, EA 2283) and Le Laboratoire d'Etudes sur l'Acquisition et la Pathologie du Langage chez l'enfant (LEAPLE, Laboratory for the Study of Children's Language Acquisition and Disorders, UMR 8606 of CNRS) In the course of acquiring their native language, children perform partial transformations on the terms which they encounter. In the case of linguistic items, these transformations often have the effect of changing the sense of the original expression. This process of reformulation by substituting-rewording plays an important role in language development, particularly in the period of later acquisitions, where they constitute evidence for children's productive abilities. We assume that such "acquisition by reformulation" will not take the same form across languages, since languages differ in the interrelations they entail between grammar and the lexicon. Crossslinguistic analysis of reformulations should throw light on the impact of particular target languages on acquisition while at the same time they could point to generalized directions in the patterning of reformulations, as a means of characterizing children's productions in the relatively little-researched domain of late acquisitions. In order for participants in the symposium to have available comparable analyses of children's productions in different languages, we would like speakers to present their findings based on the same research design, by applying procedures that have already been tried out for French. The research design as translated into English and the story 'Deux amis malheureux' as translated into English, German, Hebrew, or Italian can be obtained from Claire Martinot : cmartinot at aol.com. The research design and the story as translated into Arabic can be obtained from Amr Ibrahim : amr.ibrahim1 at libertysurf.fr. Translations of the same story for use with other languages will be greatly appreciated, we will put it at the disposal of any other researcher in the same language so that there will not be more than one translation in each language. The second call will list available languages. The research methodology involves retelling of the story. The idea is to compare the retellings of the same story produced by children of different ages (from around 4 to 12 years) and to analyse all cases of reformulation (rewording or paraphrase) of the original story in the which they produce. We hope that the symposium will also stimulate research on languages that have not been widely studied in acquisitional perspective, as in the case of Arabic, for example. Information for Participants Abstracts should be 800 to 1000 words in length, and should present the research questions and a brief description of the language in which the research is conducted. Three copies of abstracts, two without any name, should be sent by electronic or regular mail to Claire Martinot or Amr Ibrahim by March 1st, 2001. You will be informed by the end of March of acceptance or rejection. A second circular will be sent out in April with information concerning travel and accommodation. Presentations of 40 minutes in length will be given at a plenary session, preferably in French. Participants who present in another language should provide a summary of their paper in French. We plan to publish a book of the proceedings. Texts to be included in the collection will be reviewed by outside readers. Participation: 200 F for faculty members, free for students Scientific Committee : Michel Barbot, Université Marc Bloch, Strasbourg II Ruth A.Berman, University of Tel Aviv Eve V.Clark, Stanford University Maya Hickmann, Laboratoire Cognition et Développement, CNRS, Université René Descartes, Paris V. Christian Hudelot, Laboratoire d'Etudes sur l'Acquisition et la Pathologie du Langage chez l'enfant, CNRS, Université René Descartes, Paris V. Amr H.Ibrahim, Université de Franche-comté, CRFLFC du Centre Tesnière. Anne Salazar-Orvig, Université René Descartes, Paris V. Coordinators to be consulted on practical and academic matters: Claire Martinot :cmartinot at aol.com 8, rue de Verdun, esc 12 F - 94500 Champigny-sur-Marne (France) Amr Ibrahim :amr.ibrahim1 at libertysurf.fr 5, rue Louis-Léon Lepoutre F - 94130 Nogent-sur-Marne (France) -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 10426 bytes Desc: not available URL: From BennettK at twsuvm.uc.twsu.edu Wed Dec 13 19:19:58 2000 From: BennettK at twsuvm.uc.twsu.edu (Tina Bennett-Kastor) Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2000 13:19:58 -0600 Subject: data on elderly and Alzheimer's speakers In-Reply-To: Message-ID: This is slightly tangential, but I think relevant. I believe that a colleague of mine in the Dept. of Psychology has done some research on working memory tasks in Alzheimer's subjects. She used linguistic data, and possibly narrative data. Her name is Marilyn Turner, and her address is mlturner at twsu.edu. Also, One'simo Juncos Rabada'n at the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela has examined narrative skills in elderly Spanish-speaking (and Galician??) subjects. His address is pejuncos at usc.es -Tina Bennett-Kastor At 11:55 AM 12/8/00 -0500, Nan Ratner wrote: >A student of mine is planning to do a thesis on characteristics of narratives (Frogs) produced by normal elderly and Alzheimer's speakers. Does anyone know of any data currently available on this topic? > >Nan > > >Nan Bernstein Ratner, Ed.D. >Chairman >Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences >University of Maryland >College Park, MD 20742 > >301-405-4217 >301-314-2023 (FAX) > >Steering Committee Coordinator, >Special Interest Division 4 : Fluency and Fluency Disorders >American Speech-Language and Hearing Association > > >nratner at hesp.umd.edu > > > > From lauramingoia at tiscalinet.it Sat Dec 16 18:11:34 2000 From: lauramingoia at tiscalinet.it (Laura Mingoia) Date: Sat, 16 Dec 2000 19:11:34 +0100 Subject: criteria of comparison Message-ID: Hello everybody! I'm Laura and I would like to ask you an opinion. In my dissertation I'm going to study the problem of the acquisition of language in Italian and English normal and languaged impaired children. Do you think that it is better to compare the different data for MLU counted in morphemes, in words or for age of the children? I know that this is a difficult question to solve and that many articles dealing with it have been written, but I would like to have also your opinion. Thank you very much, LAURA lauramingoia at tiscalinet.it -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From slobin at cogsci.berkeley.edu Sat Dec 16 19:57:35 2000 From: slobin at cogsci.berkeley.edu (Dan I. SLOBIN) Date: Sat, 16 Dec 2000 11:57:35 -0800 Subject: criteria of comparison In-Reply-To: <007b01c0678c$068a8e80$f1430b3e@lauraalbi> Message-ID: There are unsolvable problems, in my opinion, in attempting MLU counts in a language like Italian, that has inflections that conflate several meaning elements. For example, how many morphemes--from a learner's point of view--are contained in "i ragazzi"? The actual count is quite high: i = definite article, masculine, plural ragazzi = boy, masculine, plural That is six morphemes for 'the boy-s', which counts as three morphemes in English. Similar issues arise with regard to adjectives and verbs (e.g., do you count four morphemes for "parlo": speak, 1st-person, singular, present?). An MLU count for an individual child only makes sense if you know whether the morphemes in question are productive--that is, whether they can be applied across a range of lexical items, and especially if they can be applied to new lexical items (real or nonce). Lacking a measure of productivity, a count in words might be better. But then you'd have to attend to what kinds of words are involved (i.e., part of speech) as well as the possibility of "amalgams." I would prefer a more careful breakdown of the grammatical morphemes that are productively used by each chid being investigated. -Dan Slobin Dept of Psychology University of California, Berkeley On Sat, 16 Dec 2000, Laura Mingoia wrote: > Hello everybody! > I'm Laura and I would like to ask you an opinion. In my dissertation I'm going to study the problem of the acquisition of language in Italian and English normal and languaged impaired children. Do you think that it is better to compare the different data for MLU counted in morphemes, in words or for age of the children? > > I know that this is a difficult question to solve and that many articles dealing with it have been written, but I would like to have also your opinion. Thank you very much, > > LAURA > lauramingoia at tiscalinet.it > From msyonata at pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il Sat Dec 16 20:21:25 2000 From: msyonata at pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il (Yonata Levy) Date: Sat, 16 Dec 2000 22:21:25 +0200 Subject: criteria of comparison Message-ID: Similar issues need to be addressed when one tries to count MLU in Hebrew. Dromi and Berman have proposed a system many years ago. In our studies we have adopted much of what they propose but also changed it to some extent. Here are some examples of what we do for Hebrew: In view of the problems that Dan raised wrt determining productivity and since morphemes are conflated and since the aim is to arrive at a measure which will be comparable to other languages so that one can do cross-linguistic studies the decision was to never give any single word more than - 2. Furthermore, certain forms will never receive more than 1 because they can be too easily picked out from the input. For example, the form that the child is being addressed with. So a girl using an adjective in the feminine will only get 1 for it. A boy will get 2. Nobody gets more than 1 for the canonical verb form (which in Hebrew is 3rd singular) etc. I believe such decisions are needed, even if they seem ad hoc at times, since the aim is to arrive at a reliable comparative measure. Yonata. From pyersqr at ukans.edu Sat Dec 16 22:59:09 2000 From: pyersqr at ukans.edu (Clifton Pye) Date: Sat, 16 Dec 2000 16:59:09 -0600 Subject: criteria of comparison Message-ID: Comparing language acquisition across languages is impossible to do directly. There are bound to be too many uncontrolled variables affecting the measurement such as the average number of syllables and consonants in the word or the variety of obligatory morphemes. Dan's idea of using bilingual subjects is the best way to control for some of these variables as long as the children are acquiring the languages simultaneously. Another possibility is to adopt an mlu scale that is relative to the mlu of adults. If adult speakers of a language have an average mlu of 8 and the child has an mlu of 2, the mlu of the child relative to the adult would be 2/8 or .25. Comparing relative mlus across English and Italian would show how far the children had progressed toward the adult standard in each language. Even relative mlu scales won't allow deep comparisons across languages since languages emphasize their grammatical features in different ways. The Sesotho use of passives in subject questions is a good example as are the Korean locative verbs. Clifton Pye The University of Kansas At 07:11 PM 12/16/2000 +0100, you wrote: >Hello everybody! >I'm Laura and I would like to ask you an opinion. In my dissertation I'm going to study the problem of the acquisition of language in Italian and English normal and languaged impaired children. Do you think that it is better to compare the different data for MLU counted in morphemes, in words or for age of the children? > >I know that this is a difficult question to solve and that many articles dealing with it have been written, but I would like to have also your opinion. Thank you very much, > >LAURA From gleason at bu.edu Sat Dec 16 23:04:16 2000 From: gleason at bu.edu (Jean Berko Gleason) Date: Sat, 16 Dec 2000 18:04:16 -0500 Subject: Inner State Frogs Message-ID: One of our graduate students is conducting a study in Japan of Inner State Words in the speech of Japanese moms to their language-learning children, as well as of the emerging ISWs in the speech of the children. We thought it might be interesting if as part of her study she used a wordless picture book, like Frog Where Are You?, especially if there are English data on inner state words in Frog Stories that could be compared with the Japanese data she is collecting. So, question: has anyone got such data on parents reading the story to kids with possible coding of ISWs? (We once used another Mercer Mayer book, The Great Cat Chase, and have some data on inner state words there, but our subjects were a bit older than the 2-3 year olds she is seeing.) -- thanks jean Jean Berko Gleason Boston University From macswan at asu.edu Tue Dec 19 01:36:06 2000 From: macswan at asu.edu (Jeff MacSwan) Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2000 18:36:06 -0700 Subject: Ph.D. Program in Language and Literacy, ASU College of Education In-Reply-To: <003401c068ec$369e79e0$832beacb@kongjue.ac.kr> Message-ID: Applications are invited for fall 2001 for the Ph.D. in Language and Literacy, part of ASU's Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction, College of Education. A limited number of funding packages are available. For details and information on how to obtain an application, see http://is.asu.edu/coe/langlit/index.html (or call 480/965-4602). The Interdisciplinary Language and Literacy Ph.D. Program in the Division of Curriculum and Instruction at Arizona State University provides opportunities for research and study in one or more of the following: Educational linguistics, bilingualism, second language learning, language diversity, language and literacy education, children’s literature, classroom discourse analysis, gender and literacy, emergent literacy, adolescent literacy, biliteracy, language policy, and other language education topics. PROGRAM GOALS The Language and Literacy Ph.D. Program is designed to produce researchers and teacher educators. The goals of the program are to · prepare students to critically analyze and conduct research in their area of specialization; and · prepare students to carry out research, teaching, and service activities associated with faculty positions at institutions of higher education and other professional positions. Some students opt to specialize in research, others pursue careers in teaching or administration, but all are prepared to make individual career decisions based on examined theory in language and literacy and a critical view of research. THE CURRICULUM Our doctoral curriculum typically requires at least three years of graduate study. Students are required to spend one year as fulltime students on campus at Arizona State University. However, all students are encouraged to integrate into the scholarly community on campus as much as possible, and to spend a good amount of time interacting with faculty and other students in the program. The curriculum provides students with a core set of courses, seminars, internships, and research experiences. Each student's program of study builds upon core requirements and is uniquely designed around individual interests, in consultation with the student's advisor. An important feature of the program in Language and Literacy is that students are encouraged to draw on the scholarly resources of the entire university and develop a cross-disciplinary program of study that includes courses from outside the College of Education. REQUIREMENTS The following six domains comprise the Interdisciplinary Language and Literacy Ph.D. Program: Area of Concentration 30 semester hours pertaining to language and literacy education, children’s literature, gender and literacy, emergent literacy, adolescent literature, classroom discourse analysis, educational linguistics, bilingualism and bilingual education, second language learning, language policy, biliteracy, or other language education topics. Cognate Study 12 semester hours are taken to broaden the student's understanding of the conceptual base and issues underlying the study of curriculum and instruction. Students take related work outside their declared areas of concentration. Students are expected to choose courses that have a clear link to their dissertation efforts. Cognate studies can be drawn from a broad range of offerings across the University. Inquiry and Analysis 15 semester hours of empirical analysis and inquiry foundations are required in advanced design and data analysis in quantitative and/or qualitative research methods. Core Requirements in Curriculum and Instruction 6 semester hours of courses (Interdisciplinary Research Seminar in Curriculum and Instruction and Curriculum Theory and Practice) are required as the Curriculum and Instruction core. Practicum and Integrative/Professional Development Seminars 6 semester hours of research and University teaching internships are required to broaden the training and experience of students. Dissertation and Independent Research 24 semester units of dissertation and independent research leading to completion of an approved dissertation are required. Doctoral students are also encouraged to participate in the Preparing Future Faculty Program offered by ASU's Graduate College. This program consists of two semester hours in which students learn faculty roles and responsibilities and participate in an ongoing series of integrative and collaborative seminars coordinated with the Graduate College. Students have the opportunity to develop and participate in interdisciplinary teaching, research, and service activities. MENTORS Dr. Beatriz Arias (Ph.D., Stanford University): Language policy, bilingual teacher preparation, secondary bilingual education. bea at asu.edu Dr. James Christie (Ph.D., Claremont Graduate School): Emergent literacy. jchristie at asu.edu Dr. Carol Christine (Ph.D., Arizona State University): Language and literacy education, children’s literature. caroljc at asu.edu Dr. Carole Edelsky (Ph.D., University of New Mexico): Language education and classroom discourse, language and gender. edelsky at asu.edu Dr. Billie Enz (Ph.D., Arizona State University): Emergent literacy, language acquisition. bjenz at asu.edu Dr. Christian Faltis (Ph.D., Stanford University): Bilingualism, second language acquisition, secondary bilingual education. cfaltis at asu.edu Dr. Gustavo Fischman (Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles): Cultural studies, international and comparative education. fischman at asu.edu Dr. Barbara Guzzetti (Ph.D., University of Colorado): Gender and literacy, adolescent literacy. guzzetti at asu.edu Dr. Sarah Hudelson (Ph.D., University of Texas, Austin): Biliteracy, second language acquisition. sarahh at asu.edu Dr. Jeff MacSwan (Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles): Bilingualism, code switching, educational linguistics, language assessment policy for linguistic minorities. macswan at asu.edu Dr. Jeff McQuillan (Ph.D., University of Southern California): Language and literacy education, second language learning. jeff.mcquillan at asu.edu Dr. Alleen P. Nilson (Ph.D., University of Iowa): Adolescent literature, language issues. alleen.nilsen at asu.edu Dr. Kellie Rolstad (Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles): Dual language education, language diversity, educational linguistics, elementary language arts. rolstad at asu.edu Dr. Karen Smith (Ph.D., Arizona State University): Language and literacy education, language policy. karen.smith2 at asu.edu Dr. Lucy Tse (Ph.D., University of Southern California): Second language learning, bilingualism, and biliteracy. lucy.tse at asu.edu Dr. Josephine Peyton Young (Ph.D., University of Georgia): Adolescent literacy, critical literacy, and gender and literacy. joyoung at asu.edu Dr. Terrence G. Wiley (Ph.D., University of Southern California): Language policy, second language acquisition, bilingualism, literacy, language diversity. twiley at asu.edu From ann at hawaii.edu Sun Dec 17 17:27:04 2000 From: ann at hawaii.edu (Ann Peters) Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2000 07:27:04 -1000 Subject: MLU and comparison criteria Message-ID: While I agree with the points made by Dan and Yonata, I'd like to add a couple more thoughts. One way to look at MLU is to consider how many *bits of meaning* are being strung together. This is the issue Dan was addressing. Another way is to consider how many *segmentable pieces* of language are being strung together. My feeling is that we need to think about *both* kinds of measures. >From this point of view, to take Dan's examples: ragazz-i probably contains 2 'pieces' parl-o probably contains 2 as well - at least for adults. Although I'd guess that the Hebrew restriction on at most 2 "morphemes" for any word probably works fine for Hebrew and Italian, it wouldn't do for Turkish or Finnish. In other words, the degree of 'agglutinativity' of a language is also important. I agree with Dan's and Yonata's points about productivity. ann **************************** Dr. Ann M. Peters, Professor Department of Linguistics University of Hawai`i email: ann at hawaii.edu 1890 East West Road, Rm 569 phone: 808 956-3241 Honolulu, HI 96822 fax: 808 956-9166 http://www2.hawaii.edu/~ann/ From jordan.z at chula.ac.th Tue Dec 19 02:50:32 2000 From: jordan.z at chula.ac.th (Jordan Zlatev) Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 09:50:32 +0700 Subject: CFP: Epigenetic Robotics Message-ID: Dear INFO-CHILDES and others, Please help distribute this annoucement to anyone interested in sitiated embodied cognition and language. Best, Jordan Zlatev PLEASE POST * PLEASE POST * PLEASE POST * PLEASE POST * PLEASE POST ********************************************************************* Call for Papers First International Workshop on Epigenetic Robotics: Modeling Cognitive Development in Robotic Systems September 17-18, 2001 Lund, Sweden During the last few years we have witnessed the mutual rapprochement of two traditionally very different fields of study: developmental psychology and robotics. This has come with the realization in large parts of the cognitive science community that true intelligence in natural and (possibly) artificial systems presupposes 3 crucial properties: (a) the *embodiment* of the system, (b) its *situatedness* in a physical and social environment and (c) a prolonged *epigenetic developmental process* through which increasingly more complex cognitive structures emerge in the system as a result of interactions with the physical and social environment. To designate this new field we use the term *epigenesis*, introduced in psychology by the great 20th century developmentalist Jean Piaget to refer to such development, determined primarily by interaction rather than genes. However, we believe that Piaget�s emphasis on the importance of sensorimotor interaction needs to be complemented with what is just as (and perhaps more) important for development: *social interaction*, as emphasized by another important figure of 20th century developmental psychology, Lev Vygotsky. In the emergent field of Epigenetic Robotics the interests of psychologists and roboticists meet. The former are in a position to provide the detailed empirical findings and theoretical generalizations that can guide the implementations of robotic systems capable of cognitive (including behavioral and social) development. Conversely, these implementations can help clarify, evaluate, and even develop psychological theories, which due to the complexity of the interactional processes involved have hitherto remained somewhat speculative. We are thus pleased to invite the submission of papers to the *First International Workshop on Epigenetic Robotics: Modeling Cognitive Development in Robotic Systems*, which we hope to allow researchers working in this new interdisciplinary field to share and discuss theoretical frameworks, methodologies, results and problems. Subject areas include, but are not limited to: * The role of motivation, emotions and value systems in development * The development of sensorimotor schemata and an "ecological self" * The development of joint attention * The development of imitation and social learning * The development of mind-reading/theory of mind * The development of non-verbal and verbal communication * The development of shared meaning and symbolic reference * The development of consciousness and self-awareness * The development of a concept of "person" and social relationships * Developmental disorders (Autism, Williams� Syndrome, ADHD/DAMP) * The interaction between innate structures and experience in development The workshop, sponsored by Commuications Research Laboratory, Japan,will be held for on September 17-18 in the charming town of Lund in southern Sweden, home of one of the oldest universities of Northern Europe, on September 17-18, just preceding the Fourth European Workshop on Advanced Mobile Robots (EUROBOT'01). Invited Speakers * Christopher Sinha (Institute of Language and Communication, University of Southern Denmark, Odense) * To be announced Organizing Committee * Christian Balkenius (Cognitive Science, Lund University, Sweden) * Cynthia Breazeal (Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, MIT, USA) * Kerstin Dautenhahn (Adaptive Systems, The University of Hertfordshire, UK) * Hideki Kozima (Commuications Research Laboratory, Japan) * Jordan Zlatev (Linguistics, Lund University, Sweden) Submissions Papers not exceeding 8 pages should be submitted electronically (PDF or PS) as attachment files to Hideki Kozima Further instructions to authors will be posted on the conference home page: http://www.lucs.lu.se/epigenetic-robotics Important Dates April 15, 2001: Submission of papers June 15, 2001: Notification of acceptance August 1, 2001: Deadline for camera-ready papers September 17-18, 2001: Workshop -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From skklla at uta.fi Tue Dec 19 07:15:51 2000 From: skklla at uta.fi (Klaus Laalo) Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 09:15:51 +0200 Subject: criteria of comparison In-Reply-To: <000401c0679d$c6b745c0$45058b80@ac.il.huji.ac.il> Message-ID: On Sat, 16 Dec 2000, Yonata Levy wrote: > Similar issues need to be addressed when one tries to count MLU in Hebrew. > Dromi and Berman have proposed a system many years ago. In our studies we > have adopted much of what they propose but also changed it to some extent. > Here are some examples of what we do for Hebrew: > In view of the problems that Dan raised wrt determining productivity and > since morphemes are conflated and since the aim is to arrive at a measure > which will be comparable to other languages so that one can do > cross-linguistic studies the decision was to never give any single word more > than - 2. Furthermore, certain forms will never receive more than 1 because > they can be too easily picked out from the input. For example, the form that > the child is being addressed with. So a girl using an adjective in the > feminine will only get 1 for it. A boy will get 2. Nobody gets more than 1 > for the canonical verb form (which in Hebrew is 3rd singular) etc. I believe > such decisions are needed, even if they seem ad hoc at times, since the aim > is to arrive at a reliable comparative measure. > Yonata. > I would like to add one point about canonical verb forms from the point of view of Finnish language: the 3rd singular present indicative is in Finnish the basic verb form, and it consists of the stem + vowel lengthening, e.g. sano+o 'says/is saying', otta+a 'takes/is taking'. I would count 2 morphemes for these forms, because the vowel lengthening is analogically spread in child language to verbs which don't have it in Standard Finnish, e.g. to one-syllabics (e.g. juo+o 'drinks/is drinking'; in my view, these analogies show that the child can find the morpheme of 3rd person, the vowel lengthening. Klaus Laalo professor of Finnish language University of Tampere From a.karmiloff-smith at ich.ucl.ac.uk Tue Dec 19 08:18:05 2000 From: a.karmiloff-smith at ich.ucl.ac.uk (Annette Karmiloff-Smith) Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 08:18:05 +0000 Subject: MLU and comparison criteria In-Reply-To: Message-ID: The problem that remains for me mentioned by Ann Peters "at least for adults". Surely MLU calculations are an attempt to get at what the linguistic representations are "for the child". So, it could be that raggazzi is a plural for the child of raggazzo and that "for the child" there is a representational relationship between the two, but it could be that the child has learnt "raggazzi" as an unanalyzed whole linked to a specific context. In other words, the child could be matching the phonology rather than the morphology. I have no solution except there may be clauses in intonation or the rest of each child's particular productions, etc., but the problem is real in my view, and may be more so for highly agglutinating languages. Annette At 7:27 am -1000 17/12/00, Ann Peters wrote: >While I agree with the points made by Dan and Yonata, I'd like to add a >couple more thoughts. One way to look at MLU is to consider how many *bits >of meaning* are being strung together. This is the issue Dan was >addressing. >Another way is to consider how many *segmentable pieces* of language are >being strung together. My feeling is that we need to think about *both* >kinds of measures. >>From this point of view, to take Dan's examples: > ragazz-i probably contains 2 'pieces' > parl-o probably contains 2 as well - at least for adults. >Although I'd guess that the Hebrew restriction on at most 2 >"morphemes" for any word probably works fine for Hebrew and Italian, it >wouldn't do for Turkish or Finnish. In other words, the degree of >'agglutinativity' of a language is also important. >I agree with Dan's and Yonata's points about productivity. >ann > > >**************************** >Dr. Ann M. Peters, Professor >Department of Linguistics >University of Hawai`i email: ann at hawaii.edu >1890 East West Road, Rm 569 phone: 808 956-3241 >Honolulu, HI 96822 fax: 808 956-9166 >http://www2.hawaii.edu/~ann/ -- ________________________________________________________________ Professor A.Karmiloff-Smith, FBA, FMedSci, FRSA, MAE, C.Psychol. Head, Neurocognitive Development Unit, Institute of Child Health, 30 Guilford Street, London WC1N 1EH, U.K. tel: 0207 905 2754 fax: 0207 242 7717 http://www.ich.ucl.ac.uk/units/ncdu/NDU_homepage.htm ________________________________________________________________ From msyonata at pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il Tue Dec 19 08:34:39 2000 From: msyonata at pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il (Yonata Levy) Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 10:34:39 +0200 Subject: MLU and comparison criteria Message-ID: Well, this is where productivity comes in -- if there is evidence in the corpus of the child using the pl. - I - on other nouns besides ragazzi then you are safe, I think, assuming that he should be given credit for the pl. ending. So, we in our coding make such decisions and often do not give children credit for morphological markings which they produce rarely or which are tied to specific words. (and the same problem may come up with certain syntactic constructions that are seen only once or twice). We also do not give credit for the use of the form that the child is typically being addressed with - and the reasons are the same, of course. I remind you that in addition to Brown's 90% criterion of productivity there also the other criteria of a feature used at least 3 times *in a different context* within the same file. This might offer a solution in some cases. Yonata. From Edy.Veneziano at clsh.univ-nancy2.fr Tue Dec 19 08:55:07 2000 From: Edy.Veneziano at clsh.univ-nancy2.fr (Edy Veneziano) Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 09:55:07 +0100 Subject: MLU and comparison criteria Message-ID: Indeed this is a crucial point that requires fine analytical tools to be answered. And to my mind, depending on developmental level, the answer might be only probabilistic rather than definite (rules of the thumb like those mentioned by Yonata help to go on but do not solve the basic issues). One of the things that I think should be avoided is to consider productions in isolation, something that unfortunately may occur with online ways of coding. One bit of evidence that might be used more widely consists in looking for morphologically relevant variation in one and the same type of word, although also this is not bullet-proof because each one of the items could be learned as a separate entry. However, considerations of the overall trend in the child's production might provide a further crucial hint. A more encompassing system approach to the analysis of children's productions might be a revealing useful tool in this thorny domain. Edy Annette Karmiloff-Smith wrote: > The problem that remains for me mentioned by Ann Peters "at least for adults". > Surely MLU calculations are an attempt to get at what the linguistic > representations > are "for the child". So, it could be that raggazzi is a plural for > the child of raggazzo > and that "for the child" there is a representational relationship > between the two, > but it could be that the child has learnt "raggazzi" as an unanalyzed > whole linked to a > specific context. In other words, the child could be matching the > phonology rather than > the morphology. I have no solution except there may be clauses in > intonation or the > rest of each child's particular productions, etc., but the problem is > real in my view, > and may be more so for highly agglutinating languages. > Annette -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msyonata at pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il Tue Dec 19 14:54:41 2000 From: msyonata at pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il (Yonata Levy) Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 16:54:41 +0200 Subject: MLU and comparison criteria Message-ID: Two points: I have always thought about MLU as a measure relevant to production. Is that not so? also, MLU is a heuristic, an a-theoretical measure that is meant to allow us to choose controls in a sensible way. If we had a few good rules of thumb we could avoid methodological mistakes. Yonata. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mboehning at yahoo.de Tue Dec 19 15:04:10 2000 From: mboehning at yahoo.de (=?iso-8859-1?q?Marita=20Boehning?=) Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 16:04:10 +0100 Subject: Phonological short term memory in infants Message-ID: Dear Info-CHILDES, my colleagues and I are planning to create an experiment on phonological short term memory in infants (11 months). The experiment is part of a study on early language acquisition. As the children are preverbal we will use the preferential head turning paradigm. Has anybody done anything like this or knows any useful references? Or is there any data on how much (i.e. how many syllables) children that age can remember? Thank you! Marita Böhning, Julia Siegmüller, Dr. Barbara Höhle Dept. of Linguistics University of Potsdam Germany __________________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Gesendet von Yahoo! Mail - http://mail.yahoo.de Gratis zum Millionär! - http://10millionenspiel.yahoo.de From elaine at gizmo.usc.edu Tue Dec 19 19:21:22 2000 From: elaine at gizmo.usc.edu (Elaine Andersen) Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 11:21:22 -0800 Subject: Lecturer position Message-ID: The Department of Linguistics at the University of Southern California is seeking a qualified instructor for an upper-division undergraduate course in Child Language Acquisition during the Spring 2001 semester (January 9 - May 1). Candidates must have a Ph.D., and a strong linguistics teaching record is preferred. A description of the course follows: LING 405 Child Language Acquisition: Universal characteristics of child language; stages of acquisition of phonology, syntax, semantics; processes and dimensions of development; psychological mechanisms; communicative styles. The course is scheduled to meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 2-3:20 pm, and expected enrollment is 15 students. Interested candidates, please contact Dr. Elaine Andersen (elaine at gizmo.usc.edu) as soon as possible. Please copy message to melanie at gizmo.usc.edu and zubizarr at usc.edu. Applications, including a letter of application, curriculum vita, and teaching evaluations (when possible), may be sent to: USC Department of Linguistics Child Language Instructor Search 3601 Watt Way, GFS 301 Los Angeles, CA 90089-1693 ********************************* Elaine S. Andersen Professor Linguistics, Neuroscience Hedco Neuroscience Program HNB 18 University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA 90089-2520 elaine at gizmo.usc.edu phone: 213 740-9192 fax: 213 740-5687 ********************************* From lhewitt at bgnet.bgsu.edu Tue Dec 19 21:04:06 2000 From: lhewitt at bgnet.bgsu.edu (Lynne Hewitt) Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 16:04:06 -0500 Subject: criteria of comparison Message-ID: An important methodological problem in child language research dealing with specific language impairment is matching to appropriate reference groups. While so-called "language-matching" has been preferred in the literature (usually accomplished in English via MLU and a formal language test of some sort), there are arguments in favor of age matching. A clear problem with MLU-matched samples is that they are matched on one aspect of language only. Using MLU in this way institutionalizes, albeit in hidden form, the notion that MLU is a direct probe of total language ability. This notion is highly questionable, however one measures MLU. Depending on what you are studying, matching for MLU may or may not provide you with an appropriate reference group. For a discussion of this problem see the following article, which ends by advocating language matches as less confounded: Plante, Elena; Swisher, Linda; Kiernan, Barbara; Restrepo, Maria Adelaida (1993). Language matches: Illuminating or confounding? Journal of Speech & Hearing Research, 36(4), 772-776 Lynne E. Hewitt, Ph.D., CCC-SLP Assistant Professor Dept. of Communication Disorders 251 Health Center Bldg. Bowling Green State University Bowling Green, OH 43403 Phone: 419-372-7181 Fax: 419-372-8089 From giyer at crl.ucsd.edu Tue Dec 19 22:28:00 2000 From: giyer at crl.ucsd.edu (Gowri Iyer) Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 14:28:00 -0800 Subject: Psycholinguistic research in India Message-ID: Dear Info-Childes members, I am a third year doctoral student from India enrolled in the US in an interdisciplinary doctoral program in Language and Communicative Disorders at San Diego State University and the University of California, San Diego ( http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/dept/chhs/cd/cd_degree_phd_general.html). Thus far my research has focused on language acquisition and real-time language processing in typically-developing children and adults. My goal is to apply this knowledge to further our understanding of the brain bases of language breakdown in clinical populations using both behavioral (on-line reaction time paradigms) and neural imaging techniques (such as fMRI). I am also interested in bilingual/multilingual contexts especially with regard to Indian languages (specifically Dravidian languages or Hindi/Urdu). I will be travelling to India in the next month to meet with researchers in the hopes of setting up a cross-linguistic research project. During the past year, I have been examining the literature on language acquisition in Indian languages/dialects and have found very little at this point. I am turning to the CHILDES community in the hope that some of you may be able to direct me towards language acquisition studies or child language researchers in Indian languages. Thanks in advance. I will post the information I get so that others who might be interested may also have access to it..... Sincerely, Gowri Iyer P.S. Happy Holidays!!! ******************************************************* Gowri K. Iyer ~3rd Year PhD., Joint Doctoral Program "Language & Communicative Disorders" UCSD & SDSU e-mail: giyer at crl.ucsd.edu Neuropsychology Laboratory 6330 Alvarado Court, Suite 201, Room E San Diego State University San Diego, CA 92182-1518 Phone: 619-594-8669 FAX: 619-594-4570 Center for Research in Language Cognitive Science Building University of California, San Diego 9500 Gilman Dr., Dept. 0526 La Jolla, CA 92093-0526 Phone: 858-534-5227 858-534-8046 FAX: 858-534-6788 ********************************************************* From lauramingoia at tiscalinet.it Mon Dec 18 09:32:47 2000 From: lauramingoia at tiscalinet.it (Laura Mingoia) Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2000 10:32:47 +0100 Subject: Thank you very much and Merry Christmas! Message-ID: Thank you very much for your answer. I will follow your advice not to count morphemes crosslinguistically. I would like also to wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year. LAURA lauramingoia at tiscalinet.it -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Sophie.Willemin at lettres.unine.ch Thu Dec 21 09:01:39 2000 From: Sophie.Willemin at lettres.unine.ch (Sophie Willemin) Date: Thu, 21 Dec 2000 10:01:39 +0100 Subject: pragmatic assessment Message-ID: A short request... I am looking for references about assessing conversation and pragmatic disability in children. Thank for your suggestions (in french, english or german...) Sophie Willemin assistante Université de Neuchâtel Institut d'Orthophonie - Logopédie Suisse From macw at cmu.edu Tue Dec 26 08:31:53 2000 From: macw at cmu.edu (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Tue, 26 Dec 2000 16:31:53 +0800 Subject: Thai Frogs Message-ID: Dear Info-CHILDES, I am happy to announce the addition to the CHILDES database of a new set of Frog Story narrative transcripts from Thai, donated by Jordan Zlatev of Lund University and Peerapat YangKlang of Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok. The corpus is done in CHAT format and follows additional guidelines for Frog Story as formulated by Berman and Slobin. The readme for the corpus is as follows. Some of the formatting of tables is a bit off because of the conversion from FrameMaker. However, the original documentation for this corpus, along with all the other corpora added in 2000 can be found in the electronic version of the database manual on the childes.psy.cmu.edu server. The data include both a romanized transcription and a transcript in Thai orthography. However, to read the Thai orthography you need to use a specific font on Windows called Cordia. --Brian MacWhinney Thai Corpus Zlatev, Jordan Lund University jordan_zlatev at lucs.lu.se Yangkland, Peerapat Department of Linguistics Chulalongkom University Bangkok, Thailand This data was collected as part of the First Language Acquisition of Thai project, funded by The Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education (STINT) and hosted by the Department of Linguistics, Chulalongkorn, Thailand during 2000. Though our project focused on the development of spatial expressions in Thai, we made a serious effort to make the data as consistent and general as possible so that it could be used for other studies as well. We would also like to thank everyone who helped us carry out the collection and transcription of this data: Janich Feangfu, Maneeya Sangjan, Mingmit Sriprasit, Soraya Osathanonda, Martha Karrebaek Hentze and Katarina Lindblom. The child data was collected in three Bangkok schools and the adult data was collected from students of Chulalongkorn University. The interviewer, always a native Thai speaker, first showed the Frog Story book to the subject and let him scan through it by himself for about 5 minutes. For the children, the instruction were approximately as follows: This story is about a boy, his dog, and a frog. I¹ll let you take a look at the pictures of the story, first. Then, I will ask you to tell me the story, picture by picture. The interviewer sometimes encouraged the child to proceed with the story. These utterances of the interviewer have not been transcribed. Even though we tried to keep the elicitation conditions as uniform as possible, there were inevitable differences due to the fact that the data was collected by 5 different interviewers. (The name of the interviewer appears first in the @Transcriber list.) Transcription Each recorded narrative was transcribed in standard Thai orthography, in almost all cases by the person, who performed the interview. The Thai transcription was then converted into a phonemic notation via the semi-automatic Thai Transcription program, developed at the Department of Linguistics, Chulalongkorn University. The consonsants are as follows: Thai Consonants labial postdental palatal velar glottal +voice stop b d -voice -asp p t c k ? -voice +asp ph th ch kh spirants f s h semivowel w j nasal m n N lateral l trill r The vowels are as follows: Thai Vowels Front Central Back Close i U u Mid e q o Open x a O Tones were marked as: Mid: 0, Low: 1, Falling: 2, High: 3, Rising: 4. Due to requirements of CHAT, the ? for glottal stop was omitted. The presence of the glottal stop is nevertheless derivable from the data since Thai syllables can not begin with a vowel or end with a short vowel. Whenever that seems to be the case in the data, there is an ³invisible² glottal stop before the initial vowel or after the final short vowel. Segmentation The transliteration was placed on the main tier, and the transcription in Thai orthography, using font Cordia UPC 14 (Win95:CordiaUPC:-19:222), was placed on a dependent tier. Thai orthography does not place spaces between words and the computer program does not perform word segmentation so word-segmentation had to be performed manually. Compound expressions sometimes posed problems. In deciding how to treat a multi-syllabic word, we used the following criteria: 1. One simple word IFF the two (or more) syllables do not have any clear separate meaning (e.g. naa2taaN1 Œwindow¹) 2. One complex word (³+² between the syllables) IFF the syllables have clear separate meaning, but the sum of the parts does not equal the whole (e.g. phuu2+jaj1 Œadult¹, dek1+chaaj0 Œboy¹) 3. Noun phrase: (SPACE between the parts) IFF the parts have separate meaning, BUT the parts combine systematically to give the meaning of the whole: (raN0 phUN2 Œbee hive¹ maa4 noj4 Œlittle dog¹) CHAT Formatting The rough phonemic transcription was then checked against the original tape recordings and corrections were made. Deviations from standard pronunciation were included, using the convention offered by CHAT, placing the standard in square brackets behind pronounced form, e.g. laN0 [: raN0]. We then listened through the tape once more in order to mark all pauses: short (#) and long (##) and extra-long vowels, e.g. maa:4. Repetitions and re-tracings were marked using the CHAT conventions, i.e. the repeated material was surrounded by <> and followed by [/], [//] or [///]. Following the CHAT convention, each main line was made to include only one utterance ­ defined with a combination of phonetic and grammatical criteria. Thus, a line/utterance ends when both conditions are met: 1. There is short pause (#), a long pause (##), or a ³vowel lengthening², and 2. This coincides with the end of a clause, marked as [c]. If only (1) is met, the pause is marked within the utterance/line. If only (2) is met, [c] marks the end of the clause but not the utterance/line. However, we sometimes allow a line/utterance to end even if there is a word between the pause and clause boundary. Because of the ubiquity of serial verb constructions in Thai, it was not always easy to determine where a clause ends, e.g. the criterion of ³one unitary predication² used by Berman and Slobin (1994) could not be applied. The criteria for deciding that there is a clause boundary were the following: 1. Before a new explicit or implicit subject 2. Before the complementizers thii2 and sUN2 (Œthat¹), when there are verbs both preceding and following these words 3. Before a conjunction (lx3 Œand¹, lxxw3 Œand¹, lxxw3 kO2 Œand then¹, kO2 Œthen¹, thxx1 Œbut¹), when there are verbs both preceding and following these words 4. After wa2 Œthat¹, when there are verbs both preceding and following 5. When a chain of verbs can be interrupted with any conjunction (e.g. lxxw3) Finally, each of the 50 narratives was read though once again by at least two different checkers, correcting for any inconsistencies. Furthermore, a listing of all the words in the corpus was produced using the CLAN command freq +k *.cha +u +r6, and we went through this list word by word, making sure that each word is transcribed consistently throughout the corpus. In addition to standard CHAT codes, we used the %tai dependent tier for the Thai transcription and a double ++ to indicate reduplication as in ³luuk2++luuk2.² Files The files are summarized in the following table. The subjects¹ names do not appear in the transcripts. Thai Frog Files File Age Sex Date 3a 4;3.8 f 18-FEB-2000 3b 3;11.20 f 18-FEB-2000 3c 4;4.4 m 18-FEB-2000 3d 3;10.12 f 18-FEB-2000 3e 3;11.16 m 18-FEB-2000 3f 4;0.2 f 8-SEP-2000 3g 3;11.19 m 8-SEP-2000 3h 3;6.15 m 8-SEP-2000 3I 3;11.2 m 8-SEP-2000 3j 3;11.22 f 8-SEP-2000 5a 6;02.15 m 18-FEB-2000 5b 5;11.23 m 18-FEB-2000 5c 5;6.01 m 18-FEB-2000 5d 5;06.11 m 18-FEB-2000 5e 5;08.18 f 18-FEB-2000 5f 6;04.1 m 18-FEB-2000 5g 5;10.10 f 18-FEB-2000 5h 5;06.25 m 18-FEB-2000 5I 5;11.21 m 18-FEB-2000 5j 6;01.17 f 16-FEB-2000 9a 8;7.8 m 16-FEB-2000 9b 9;0.21 f 16-FEB-2000 9c 8;10.27 m 16-FEB-2000 9d 9;0.11 f 16-FEB-2000 9e 9;2.0 m 16-FEB-2000 9f 9;3.2 f 16-FEB-2000 9g 8;10.8 m 16-FEB-2000 9h 8;7.0 f 16-FEB-2000 9I 9;0.3 f 16-FEB-2000 9j 9;7.2 f 2-FEB-2000 11a 10;10.16 f 16-FEB-2000 11b 10;05.22 f 16-FEB-2000 11c 11;1.5 f 16-FEB-2000 11d 11;4.20 f 16-FEB-2000 11e 11;2.24 m 16-FEB-2000 11f 10;8.27 m 16-FEB-2000 11g 10;3.22 m 16-FEB-2000 11h 11;0.16 m 16-FEB-2000 11i 10;4.24 f 16-FEB-2000 11j 11;3.18 m 16-FEB-2000 20a 22;8.0 f 15-APR-2000 20b 35;06.0 f 15-APR-2000 20c 21;7.0 f 15-APR-2000 20d 22;11.0 f 15-APR-2000 20e 22;8.0 f 15-APR-2000 20f 22;11.30 m 15-APR-2000 20g 29;01.20 m 15-APR-2000 20h 20;07.11 m 15-APR-2000 20I 23;10.27 m 15-APR-2000 20j 19;06.06 m 15-APR-2000 If you publish any paper based on this data, please send an MS-Word or PDF-formatted version of your paper as an attachment to jordan_zlatev at lucs.lu.se. Users of this data should cite Zlatev, J. and Yangklang, P. (2001) ³Frog stories in Thai: Transcription and Analysis of 50 Thai narratives from 5 age groups². (forthcoming) From macw at cmu.edu Tue Dec 26 10:29:25 2000 From: macw at cmu.edu (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Tue, 26 Dec 2000 18:29:25 +0800 Subject: Japanese corpus with audio data Message-ID: Dear Info-CHILDES, We have now added a third linked audio corpus to the data at http://childes.psy.cmu.edu/audio/ This directory includes both transcripts on the learning of Japanese from Susanne Miyata's subject Tai. The transcripts are linked to audio files which are included in the directory. This is now the third linked corpus, along with the Bernstein and MacWhinney corpora. Thanks to Susanne for sending us this great resource for the study of the acquisition of Japanese. --Brian MacWhinney Here Susanne's readme file: The TAI Corpus: Longitudinal Speech Data of a Japanese Boy aged 1;5.20 - 3;1.1 v.2000/7 by Susanne Miyata ******************************** ** Please cite: *************** ** Miyata, Susanne (2000). The TAI Corpus: Longitudinal Speech Data of a Japanese Boy aged 1;5.20 - 3;1.1 Bulletin of Shukutoku Junior College 39, 77-85. ******************************** ******************************** Contact Address: Dr. Susanne Miyata Aichi Shukutoku University 23 Sakuragaoka Chikusa-ku Nagoya, 464-8671 Japan smiyata at asu.aasa.ac.jp ******************************** History This data was collected during September, 1993 and June, 1995. Tai was after Ryo, Nao, and Aki (Miyata, 1992, 1993, 1995) the fourth child observed longitudinally. For Tai's observation I applied the same schedule used for the observation of the other children: that is once a week for about one hour at his home while playing with his mother. In the previous observations it had proved convenient for both mother and observer, to fix weekday and time. In Tai's case, we decided to start about 10 o'clock in the morning. After a short period of preparation (video setting, and the indispensable cup of coffee for the observer), we would start with the recordings about 10:30. The recordings were done parallel on mini-discs (audio recording) and 8mm video. This was done out of two reasons. The sound quality for MD was considerably better than for the video. On the other hand, the video recording contains necessary information to be able to judge the utterances of the child. The second reason is the rather low reliability of the equipment. Actually, out of 75 MD recordings, 3 were not usable for different reasons (battery problems especially in the cold season, or tape damage). In this case the additional video-recording can step in for the audio recording. For the recording, the video camera was placed on the TV set in the corner of the 16qm living room. With a fish eye lens, as well as a microphone with an recording angle of 90 degrees most of the sound and movement in this space could be captured. Different from Aki, Tai did not show any interest in the equipment, and we could leave it unattended on the TV set. Although the living room was open to a kitchen of the same size, this room was defined as "play room" used during the observational sessions, and the child accepted it soon. When getting older, he would prepare his toys and the cushion (zabuton) for the observer, and urging us to start with the play session right away.The observer would sit in the second corner, as passive as possible, in order not to disturb the mother-child interaction. The setting was free indoor play. The mother was instructed to 'make the child speak'. In order to obtain as many free spontaneous speech from the child as possible, she was told not to entertain 'not too much' story telling and singing. The recording time was a little more than 40 minutes, and was cut done to 40 minutes in the transcriptions. After the recording we would sit down in the kitchen and discuss the development of the child, his friendship relations, and his health, as well as general issues of education. Transcription The sound data was computerized, and sound-linked to CHAT files (MacWhinney, 2000). The transcription was done on the base of the beforehand linked sound stretches. The easiness to access the sound (it is possible to listen to an utterance just with one mouse-click) proved to be very convenient during this process. The transcription was done in Latin script (Hepburn system) following JCHAT 1.0 Hebon (Oshima-Takane & MacWhinney, 1995). Word separation follows WAKACHI98 (Miyata & Naka, 1998). For unclear sound stretches I have used UNIBET for Japanese (Terao, 1995). Biographical Data Tai was born on April, 10th, 1992 in Nagoya, the firstborn child. His mother was 28 years old at he time of his birth. Pregnancy and delivery were normal. Tai's birth weight was 3330 g. His physical development was normal, and he was healthy throughout the observation. Tai was an active, curious, and sensitive child, with a long concentration span. He displayed a high sense of responsibility. His pronunciation was very clear. At present (March, 2000) he is a healthy and awake first grader with excellent records. Other participants: TMO Mother, called "Kakka", 29 years, housewife, former secretary at a University in Nagoya. Educational level 15 TFA Father, called "Totto", 30 years, research engineer. Educational level 15 SUU Investigator, called "Suuchan", friend of TMO Pseudonyms Tai's parents gave their kind consent for the publication of this data. Although they consented to the use of their actual names, I have decided to anonymize all last names (except my own) and other identifying information throughout the corpus in order to preserve a certain amount of privacy. Table of Contents File No. File Name Age Minutes MLUm (based on all utterances) 1 T930930 1;5.20 40 1.514 2 T931007 1;5.27 40 1.591 3 T931014 1;6.4 30 1.288 4 T931021 1;6.11 40 1.440 5 T931029 1;6.19 40 1.788 6 T931103 1;6.24 40 1.924 7 T931111 1;7.1 40 1.477 8 T931118 1;7.8 40 1.635 9 T931125 1;7.15 40 1.820 10 T931223 1;8.13 40 1.691 11 T940107 1;8.28 40 2.105 12 T940113 1;9.3 40 2.329 13 T940120 1;9.10 40 2.331 14 T940127 1;9.17 40 2.180 15 T940204 1;9.25 40 2.223 16 T940210 1;10.0 40 2.235 17 T940217 1;10.7 40 2.313 18 T940224 1;10.14 40 2.233 19 T940303 1;10.20 40 2.348 20 T940311 1;11.1 40 2.467 21 T940324 1;11.14 40 2.739 22 T940330 1;11.20 40 2.529 23 T940407 1;11.28 40 3.306 24 T940414 2;0.4 40 2.519 25 T940421 2;0.11 40 2.471 26 T940428 2;0.18 40 2.689 27 T940505 2;0.25 40 2.929 28 T940512 2;1.2 40 3.042 29 T940519 2;1.9 40 3.004 30 T940526 2;1.16 40 3.248 31 T940602 2;1.23 40 3.737 32 T940609 2;1.30 40 3.368 33 T940616 2;2.6 40 3.485 34 T940623 2;2.13 40 3.178 35 T940630 2;2.20 40 3.016 36 T940707 2;2.27 40 3.609 37 T940714 2;3.4 40 3.413 38 T940721 2;3.11 40 2.831 39 T940728 2;3.18 40 3.288 40 T940804 2;3.25 40 2.998 41 T940813 2;4.3 40 3.102 42 T940825 2;4.15 40 2.934 43 T940831 2;4.21 40 3.158 44 T940909 2;4.30 40 3.425 45 T940916 2;5.6 40 2.916 46 T940922 2;5.12 40 3.325 47 T940929 2;5.19 40 3.564 48 T941006 2;5.26 40 3.134 49 T941013 2;6.3 40 3.486 50 T941020 2;6.10 40 3.688 51 T941028 2;6.18 40 4.036 52 T941103 2;6.24 40 3.182 53 T941110 2;7.0 40 3.252 54 T941117 2;7.7 40 3.563 55 T941123 2;7.13 40 3.516 56 T941201 2;7.21 40 4.006 57 T941208 2;7.28 40 3.932 58 T941215 2;8.5 40 4.486 59 T941222 2;8.11 40 4.040 60 T950112 2;9.2 40 4.175 61 T950119 2;9.9 40 4.779 62 T950127 2;9.17 40 3.806 63 T950202 2;9.23 40 3.133 64 T950209 2;9.30 40 4.261 65 T950216 2;10.6 40 3.286 66 T950223 2;10.13 40 4.085 67 T950302 2;10.20 40 3.663 68 T950310 2;11.0 40 4.059 69 T950324 2;11.14 40 5.003 70 T950330 2;11.20 40 5.672 71 T950413 3;0.3 40 4.227 72 T950504 3;0.24 40 5.058 73 T950511 3;1.1 40 4.923 74 T950518 3;1.8 40 4.133 75 T950608 3;1.29 40 3.787 Warnings a) Reliability was not checked. b) Comments and descriptions concerning child activities are not yet supplied. They will be added in a later version. Acknowledgments I gratefully acknowledge the support of this research by the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture through the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Priority Areas 10114104 entitled "Development of Mind", and through the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (Database) 184. I would like to thank Brian MacWhinney (Carnegie Mellon University) for his understanding technical support during the various phases of transcription, the members of the JCHAT Project for their encouraging supportment, and the numerous students who helped with the transcription, especially Yumiko Naganawa and Naomi Hamasaki. My special thanks go to Beverley Curran (Aichi Shukutoku University) for the emotional support and encouragement throughout this work. My warmest thanks though go to Tai and his mother. Without their understanding collaboration, this project would not have been possible. Literature MacWhinney, B. (2000). The CHILDES Project: Tools for Analyzing Talk. 3rd ed. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Assoc. Miyata, S. (1992). Wh-Questions of the Third Kind: The Strange Use of Wa-Questions in Japanese Children, Bulletin of Aichi Shukutoku Junior College No.31, p.151-155 Miyata, S. (1993). Japanische Kinderfragen: Zum Erwerb von Form - Inhalt - Funktion von Frageausdruecken, Hamburg: OAG. Miyata, S. (1995). The Aki Corpus. Longitudinal Speech Data of a Japanese Boy aged 1.6-2.12. Bulletin of Aichi Shukutoku Junior College No.34, 183-191 Miyata, S. (2000). Assigning MLU stages in Japanese. Journal of Educational Systems and Technologies. The Audio Visual Center, Chukyo University Nagoya Japan. Vol.9. Miyata, S. & N. Naka. (1998). Wakachigaki Gaidorain WAKACHI98 v.1.1. Educational Psychology Forum Report No. FR-98-003. The Japanese Association of Educational Psychology. Oshima-Takane, Y. & B. MacWhinney (eds.) (1995, 2nd ed. 1998). CHILDES Manual for Japanese. Montreal: McGill University / Nagoya: Chukyo University. Sugiura, M., N. Naka, S.Miyata & Y.Oshima. (1997). Nihongo Shutoku Kenkyu no tame no Joho Shisutemu CHILDES no Nihongoka. Gengo, 26, 3, 80-87. Terao, Y. (1995). Nihongo no tame no UNIBET. Oshima-Takane, Y. & B. MacWhinney (eds.) (1995). CHILDES Manual for Japanese. Montreal: McGill University. 97-100. From vickyjanssen at hotmail.com Sat Dec 2 10:13:27 2000 From: vickyjanssen at hotmail.com (vicky janssen) Date: Sat, 2 Dec 2000 10:13:27 -0000 Subject: Turntaking and autonomy in young children Message-ID: Hello everybody, I'm a student in speech and language pathology, and I would like to have some information about turntaking and autonomy in children from 1-3 years old. With tt. I mean a vocalisation and/or gesture made by the child, if the child intends to communicatie with it. Autonomy is tt., but with autonomy the child opens a new subject in the interaction and/or gives information even when the interactionpartner did not ask for it. If you have some articles, or titles from articles and books, they are very welcome! Bye! Vicky Janssen. _____________________________________________________________________________________ Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com From inger.moen at ilf.uio.no Sat Dec 2 10:15:09 2000 From: inger.moen at ilf.uio.no (inger.moen at ilf.uio.no) Date: Sat, 2 Dec 2000 11:15:09 +0100 Subject: Turntaking and autonomy in young children In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Dear "vicky janssen" This is an automatic reply. Feel free to send additional mail, as only this one notice will be generated. The following is a prerecorded message, sent for ingerm at ilf.uio.no: ==================================================== Inger Moen is out of her office during the period November 28 til December 3. From Edy.Veneziano at clsh.univ-nancy2.fr Mon Dec 4 09:00:21 2000 From: Edy.Veneziano at clsh.univ-nancy2.fr (Edy Veneziano) Date: Mon, 4 Dec 2000 10:00:21 +0100 Subject: Reminiscence of Hermina Sinclair de-Zwart Message-ID: Those who are interested may find a "Reminiscence of Hermina Sinclair de-Zwart at this WEB site: http://www.piaget.org/GE/GE-ToC.html From bpearson at comdis.umass.edu Tue Dec 5 03:31:06 2000 From: bpearson at comdis.umass.edu (Barbara Zurer Pearson) Date: Mon, 4 Dec 2000 22:31:06 -0500 Subject: Updating your listing on the CHILDES Memberlist Message-ID: Dear ChiPeople, I've been using the CHILDES member list lately to get people's addresses. It's pretty handy, but I'm also realizing how hard it is to keep it up-to- date. When I sent to one person and had it bounce, I decided to check my own listing--and of course there was a mistake in it, too. Can I suggest that we all check our listings and make sure they're current? http://childes.psy.cmu.edu/ then Membership list then Chi People then "member" "babbling" (then search on yourself). The permissions are set for you to go into the "Form View" and "Edit" your record by yourself. No need to go through the webmaster.. If you have any problem with it, though, email Kelly Sacco sacco at cmu.edu She'll help you out. Great (and another thank you to Brian for yet another helpful service). Cheers, Barbara ****************************************** Barbara Zurer Pearson, Ph.D. Project Manager, NIH Working Group on AAE Department of Communication Disorders University of Massachusetts, Amherst 117 Arnold House Amherst MA 01003 413-545-5023 fax 545-0803 bpearson at comdis.umass.edu http://www.umass.edu/aae/ From mboehning at yahoo.de Wed Dec 6 09:54:09 2000 From: mboehning at yahoo.de (=?iso-8859-1?q?Marita=20Boehning?=) Date: Wed, 6 Dec 2000 10:54:09 +0100 Subject: Position available Message-ID: The University of Potsdam offers the part-time position of a PhD Student/ Postdoc/ Junior Researcher in a research project on perceptual, cognitive, and neurophysiological factors in impaired and non-impaired language acquisition. Applicants should have: - A university degree in Linguistics, Developmental or Experimental Psychology or related subjects - Experience with empirical work in the domain of language acquisition - Knowledge of the methods for studying speech perception in early infancy and childhood - An interest in working in an interdisciplinary group (linguistics, neurosciences, psychology) -Excellent skills in German (spoken and written) Initial appointment will be for the period of two years with the potential of renewal for a third year. Starting date: as soon as possible The salary is according to the normal range for researchers ('wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter', BAT-O IIa/2) in Germany, with details depending on age and marital status. Rank of Job: PhD student/ Postdoc/ Junior Researcher Areas Required: First Language Acquisition Other Desired Areas: Speech Perception, Language Processing University or Organization: University of Potsdam Department: Linguisti Country: Germany Final Date of Application: 31.12.2000 Contact: weissenb at rz.uni-potsdam.de Address for Applications: Prof. Juergen Weissenborn University of Potsdam Linguistics Department P.O. Box 60 15 53 14415 Potsdam Germany ----------------- Tel. +49-331-977 2932 Fax +49-331-977 2095 __________________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Gesendet von Yahoo! Mail - http://mail.yahoo.de Gratis zum Million?r! - http://10millionenspiel.yahoo.de From plahey at mindspring.com Wed Dec 6 16:14:49 2000 From: plahey at mindspring.com (Peg Lahey) Date: Wed, 6 Dec 2000 11:14:49 -0500 Subject: Fw: NEW FOUNDATION TO FUND PROJECTS Message-ID: NEW PRIVATE FOUNDATION TO FUND PROJECTS RELATED TO DEVELOPMENTAL LANGUAGE DISORDERS December 6, 2000 Roger Bamford and Denise Lahey today announce the formation of a private non-profit foundation, the Bamford-Lahey Children's Foundation, that will conduct and support programs designed to enhance the linguistic, cognitive, and social development of children. For the next few years, the Foundation will focus on children with Developmental Language Disorders and will target projects designed to facilitate the language development of children with language problems. To act as president and run the Foundation, Mr. and Mrs. Bamford have appointed Dr. Margaret Lahey, who is known for her research and writings about children's language disorders. Objectives and Activities The immediate objectives of the Foundation are to: a.. Develop and evaluate innovative strategies for enhancing language learning in children with developmental language disorders b.. Stimulate research on the application of technology to language assessment and intervention c.. Increase understanding of how certain aspects of health, particularly nutrition, may influence cognitive, linguistic, and social development. To accomplish these objectives, the Foundation expects to: a.. Run conferences to disseminate information to professionals and parents b.. Hold workshops to stimulate research in areas related to its objectives c.. Conduct and fund research in areas related to its objectives Many of these activities will be carried out with the assistance of independent contractors who will be paid by the Foundation. for example, funding will be available for persons interested in initiating and directing a research or development project related to the Foundation's objectives. Guidelines for Obtaining Funding Detailed guidelines for obtaining funding are described on the Foundation web site www.Bamford-Lahey.org. Qualified persons are encouraged to submit a letter-of-inquiry if they are interested in working for the Foundation on an activity related to its immediate objectives. For the first year of operation, contracts will be considered for amounts of up to $50,000. In addition, the foundation will consider making one or two small grants ($20,000 or less) a year through other non-profit organizations (e.g., universities, hospitals, public schools). Questions, letters-of-inquiry, and comments can be sent to info at Bamford-Lahey.org Advisory Panel To provide input in various areas, Dr. Lahey as assembled an advisory panel with relevant expertise. The panel includes Denise Lahey, Lois Bloom, Ph.D., Jan Edwards, Ph.D., Marc Fey, Ph.D., Henry Lahey, Ph.D., Julie Masterson, Ph.D., and Fred Pescatore, M.D., M.P.H.. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From deak at COGSCI.ucsd.edu Wed Dec 6 19:51:44 2000 From: deak at COGSCI.ucsd.edu (Gedeon =?iso-8859-1?Q?De=E1k?=) Date: Wed, 6 Dec 2000 11:51:44 -0800 Subject: position search announcement Message-ID: The Department of Cognitive Science at UCSD is searching for an assistant professor. Please circulate the announcement below to any interested colleagues. FACULTY POSITION IN COGNITIVE SCIENCE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO The Department of Cognitive Science at the University of California, San Diego invites applications for a faculty position at the assistant professor level (tenure-track) starting July 1, 2001, the salary commensurate with the experience of the successful applicant and based on the UC pay scale. The department of cognitive science at UCSD was the first of its kind in the world, and, as part of an exceptional scientific community, it remains a dominant influence in the field it helped to create. The department is truly interdisciplinary, with a faculty whose interests span anthropology, computer science, human development, linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy, psychology, and sociology. The department is looking for a top-caliber junior researcher in cognitive science. Applicants must have a Ph.D. (or ABD). A broad interdisciplinary perspective and experience with multiple methodologies will be highly valued. Women and minorities are encouraged to apply. The University of California, San Diego is an affirmative action/equal opportunity employer. All applications received by January 1, 2001 will receive thorough consideration until position is filled. Candidates should include a vita, reprints, a short letter describing their background and interests, and names and addresses of at least three references to: University of California, San Diego Faculty Search Committee Department of Cognitive Science 0515-OB 9500 Gilman Drive La Jolla, CA 92093-0515 From lsc at th.com.br Wed Dec 6 11:40:34 2000 From: lsc at th.com.br (Leonor Scliar Cabral) Date: Wed, 6 Dec 2000 09:40:34 -0200 Subject: compounds Message-ID: Dear Colleagues, One of my students is doing research on children's lexical creation of compounds. Could anyone help me with bibliographic references on the subject? Thank you. Prof. Dr. Leonor Scliar-Cabral From centenoj at stjohns.edu Thu Dec 7 04:57:14 2000 From: centenoj at stjohns.edu (Jose G. Centeno) Date: Wed, 6 Dec 2000 23:57:14 -0500 Subject: No subject Message-ID: I have a student interested in doing a literature review of studies on children acquiring Yiddish, particularly phonology. Any pointers on (1) research on normal and/or disordered Yiddish-speaking children and (2) publications on Yiddish phonology will be appreciated. Thanks. Jose Centeno St. John's University ( centenoj at stjohns.edu ) ___________________________________________________ Jose G. Centeno, Ph.D., CCC-SLP Speech-Language Pathology & Audiology Program Dept. of Speech, Communication Sciences, & Theatre St. John's University 8000 Utopia Parkway Jamaica, NY 11439 Tel: 718-990-2629, 6452 Fax: 718-990-5878 ___________________________________________________ From ann.dowker at psy.ox.ac.uk Fri Dec 8 14:00:31 2000 From: ann.dowker at psy.ox.ac.uk (Ann Dowker) Date: Fri, 8 Dec 2000 14:00:31 +0000 Subject: compounds In-Reply-To: <3A2E25B2.CAACCFE0@th.com.br> Message-ID: Eve Clark has done a lot of work on this topic; e.g. E.V. Clark: The Lexicon in Acquisition; Cambridge University Press, 1993 E.V. Clark, B.F. Hecht and RC Mulford: Coining complex compounds in English: affixes and word order; Linguistics, 1986, 24, 7-29 E.V. Clark and R.A. Berman: Types of linguistic knowledge: interpreting and producing compound nouns; Journal of Child Language, 1987, 3, 547-567 E.V. Clark: Lexical creativity in French speaking children; Cahiers de Pscyhologie Cognitive/ Current Psychology of Cognition, 1998, 17, 513-530 (French children, like French adults, coin fewer compounds than their English-speaking counterparts). Other papers that might be of interest include: G.M. Gottfried: Comprehending compounds: evidence for metaphoric skill?; Journal of Child Language, 1997, 24, 163-186 H. Van der Lely and V. Christian: Lexical word formation in children with grammatical SLI; Cognition, 2000, 75, 33-63 D. Vasanta and P. Sailaja: Making sense of compound nouns: a study of word relatedness on Telugu; Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 1999, 28, 331-346 J. Windsor: The functions of novel word compounds; Journal of Child Language, 1993, 20, 119-138 Hope some of these are useful, Ann On Wed, 6 Dec 2000, Leonor Scliar Cabral wrote: > Dear Colleagues, > One of my students is doing research on children's lexical creation of > compounds. > Could anyone help me with bibliographic references on the subject? > Thank you. > Prof. Dr. > Leonor Scliar-Cabral > > > From nratner at hesp.umd.edu Fri Dec 8 16:55:39 2000 From: nratner at hesp.umd.edu (Nan Ratner) Date: Fri, 8 Dec 2000 11:55:39 -0500 Subject: data on elderly and Alzheimer's speakers Message-ID: A student of mine is planning to do a thesis on characteristics of narratives (Frogs) produced by normal elderly and Alzheimer's speakers. Does anyone know of any data currently available on this topic? Nan Nan Bernstein Ratner, Ed.D. Chairman Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences University of Maryland College Park, MD 20742 301-405-4217 301-314-2023 (FAX) Steering Committee Coordinator, Special Interest Division 4 : Fluency and Fluency Disorders American Speech-Language and Hearing Association nratner at hesp.umd.edu From msyonata at pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il Fri Dec 8 17:37:42 2000 From: msyonata at pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il (Yonata Levy) Date: Fri, 8 Dec 2000 19:37:42 +0200 Subject: data on elderly and Alzheimer's speakers Message-ID: Hi, A student of mine is in the final stages of her dissertation on language in Hebrew speaking AD patients. She is mostly concerned with formal grammatical vs. semantic features and uses characteristics of Hebrew to examine the profile they show but she has also done some narratives (NOT the Frog, however). If you give me more detail I'll see how relevant our work is to yours. I too am interested in work along those line that is currently being conducted. is anyone doing that kind of work? Yonata. From eclark at psych.stanford.edu Fri Dec 8 17:44:30 2000 From: eclark at psych.stanford.edu (Eve V. Clark) Date: Fri, 8 Dec 2000 09:44:30 -0800 Subject: Next Child Language Research Forum 2002 Message-ID: All: this is to announce that the next Child Language Research Forum will be in April 2002. The date will be fixed in the next few months, and the web-site at CSLI updated too. (Abstracts for that meeting will therefore be due in early January 2002.) We are making some general changes in the format of the meeting, and also in its timetable. For the immediate future, we would like to devote each biennial meeting to a specific topic or area in studies of language acquisition, with special emphasis on interdisciplinary contributions. If you have suggestions about specific topics you think would benefit from discussion at a future meeting, please email me Eve Clark Organizing Committee Child Language Research Forum ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Eve V. Clark Professor of Linguistics & Symbolic Systems Department of Linguistics Stanford University Stanford, CA 94305-2150 USA Tel. 650 / 723-4284 (725-1563) Fax. 650 / 723-5666 EM: eclark at psych.stanford.edu ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 1186 bytes Desc: not available URL: From asanord at ling.gu.se Fri Dec 8 18:35:16 2000 From: asanord at ling.gu.se (Asa Nordqvist) Date: Fri, 8 Dec 2000 19:35:16 +0100 Subject: Cochlear implants Message-ID: Dear info-childers, I and my colleague Kerstin Nelfelt at Gothenburg university, Sweden, will run a project (starting in January 2001) where will follow and examine the langauge development by some Swedish young deaf children that have got Cochlear implants. We are very interested in getting in contact with researchers that have experiences from similar projects in other countries and languages. Thanks in advance, ?sa Nordqvist ********************************************************************* AAsa Nordqvist PhD-student Dept of Linguistics phone: +46-31-7734627 Goeteborg University fax: +46-31-7734853 Box 200 e-mail: asanord at ling.gu.se SE-405 30 Goeteborg http://www.ling.gu.se/~asanord/ Sweden ********************************************************************* From macw at cmu.edu Sun Dec 10 07:53:49 2000 From: macw at cmu.edu (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Sun, 10 Dec 2000 15:53:49 +0800 Subject: Position at Rutgers Message-ID: Dear Info-CHILDES, I am posting this for Karin Stromswold who is having mail problems. Please reply to her at Rutgers, not to me. Thanks. --Brian MacWhinney The Department of Psychology at Rutgers University-New Brunswick invites applications for three tenure-track assistant professorships for Fall 2001 or 2000 in the areas of behavioral neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and health. Individuals at the Associate level could be considered in special cases. COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY: We seek an individual who will expand upon or complement our current strengths in the areas of concepts and cognitive development, visual perception, reasoning, language, comparative cognition, and computational/formal models. Candidates will be expected to teach both graduate and undergraduate courses. They may be considered for membership in the Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science and contribute to a rapidly developing cross-institution program in cognitive neuroscience. BIOPSYCHOLOGY AND BEHAVIORAL NEUROSCIENCE: We seek an individual who will expand upon or complement our current strengths in learning, memory, motivation, and experience-related forms of neuroplasticity. The specific area of research expertise is open, although candidates with interests in sensory systems, development and regenerative plasticity, molecular genetics, or neuropsychopharmacology are particularly attractive. Candidates should have postdoctoral experience and will be expected to teach both graduate and undergraduate courses. They will be considered for appointment in the Rutgers Center for Collaborative Neuroscience. HEALTH: We seek someone with expertise in the following areas: 1. Research identifying biological mechanisms that account for disease-related effects of psychological stress, coping, social relationships, and personality. II. Research on the mechanisms or modification of health promoting and health-damaging behaviors. III. Research on adaptation to physical disease and treatment. Expertise in the genetic or neuropsychological factors in physical disease, and/or in the use of biostatistics and multivariate models used in health research, would be an advantage. Please send a curriculum vitae, statement of research and teaching interests, a selection of papers, and three letters of recommendation to the appropriate Search Committee, Department of Psychology, 152 Frelinghuysen Road, Piscataway, NJ 08854- 8020. A review of applications will begin by December 10, although applications arriving after this date will be considered. Rutgers University is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity employer. From eclark at psych.stanford.edu Mon Dec 11 23:13:53 2000 From: eclark at psych.stanford.edu (Eve Clark) Date: Mon, 11 Dec 2000 15:13:53 -0800 Subject: International Symposium / CALL for research & papers Message-ID: Appel ? communication Colloque International Acquisition et construction du sens dans une perspective interlangue Universit? Ren? Descartes, Paris V 14-15 d?cembre 2001 Organisation : Claire Martinot avec le soutien de la Cellule de Recherche Fondamentale en Linguistique Fran?aise et Compar?e (CRFLFC, Centre Tesni?re de l'Universit? de Franche-Comt?, EA 2283) et du Laboratoire d'Etudes sur l'Acquisition et la Pathologie du Langage chez l'enfant (LEAPLE, UMR 8606 du CNRS) (The English version follows below the French version) Au cours de l'acquisition de sa langue maternelle, l'enfant s'approprie les ?nonc?s de la langue en les transformant partiellement. Ces transformations, qui s'appliquent aux formes linguistiques, modifient le plus souvent le sens de l'?nonc? de d?part. Ce processus de reformulation par reprise-transformation d?termine en grande partie l'acquisition en particulier lors de la p?riode des acquisitions tardives et il en constitue une trace, visible dans les productions enfantines. On postule que ce mode d'acquisition par reformulation ne se r?alise pas de la m?me fa?on selon les langues parce que les relations entre le lexique et la grammaire diff?rent d'une langue ? l'autre. Une analyse interlangue des modes de reformulation permettrait d'une part d'?valuer l'impact de chaque langue maternelle sur les acquisitions, et d'autre part de tenter une g?n?ralisation de l'analyse des reformulations en tant qu'outil de description des productions, dans le domaine relativement peu d?crit des acquisitions tardives. Afin que le colloque permette de confronter des analyses comparables ? partir de productions enfantines dans diff?rentes langues, on souhaiterait que les communiquants pr?sentent leurs r?sultats ? partir du m?me protocole de recherche, d?j? exp?riment? sur le fran?ais (le protocole, en anglais ou en fran?ais, et le texte du conte Deux amis malheureux, traduit en anglais, en allemand, en italien ou en h?breu sont ? demander ? Claire Martinot : cmartinot at aol.com ; le conte traduit en arabe est ? demander ? Amr Ibrahim : amr.ibrahim1 at libertysurf.fr , ainsi que le protocole en arabe).Toute autre proposition de traduction du conte et du protocole de recherche serait vivement appr?ci?e, nous la mettrons alors ? la disposition d'autres chercheurs ?ventuels dans la m?me langue de fa?on ? ce qu'il n'y ait qu'une seule traduction par langue. La deuxi?me circulaire fera le point sur les langues disponibles. Il s'agirait de comparer les modes de restitution du m?me conte produit par des enfants d'?ges diff?rents (environ de 4 ? 12 ans) et d'analyser toutes les proc?dures de reformulations attest?es entre les s?quences du conte et les s?quences produites par les enfants. On souhaite aussi que ce colloque soit l'occasion de recherches portant sur des langues non encore ou peu d?crites, du point de vue de leur acquisition, comme c'est le cas de l'arabe par exemple. Informations Les propositions de communication comporteront 800 ? 1000 mots. Elles exposeront la probl?matique envisag?e de fa?on pr?cise ainsi que la langue sur laquelle porte la recherche. Les propositions sont ? envoyer par courrier ?lectronique ou postal en 3 exemplaires, dont deux anonymes, ? Claire Martinot ou Amr Ibrahim avant le 1er mars 2001. Une r?ponse est pr?vue fin mars. Une deuxi?me circulaire sera envoy?e courant avril et donnera des informations concernant le transport et l'h?bergement. Les communications (40 mn) auront lieu en s?ance pl?ni?re. Elles se feront de pr?f?rence en fran?ais. Si un expos? a lieu dans une autre langue, on remercie les communiquants de pr?voir une synth?se de leur travail en fran?ais. On pr?voit la publication d'un livre - les textes retenus pour le recueil auront ?t? pr?alablement soumis ? un comit? de lecture. Participation : 200 F pour les enseignants (gratuit pour les ?tudiants). Comit? scientifique : Michel Barbot, Universit? Marc Bloch, Strasbourg II Ruth A.Berman, Universit? de Tel Aviv Eve V.Clark, Universit? de Stanford Maya Hickmann, Laboratoire Cognition et D?veloppement, CNRS, Universit? Ren? Descartes, Paris V. Christian Hudelot, Laboratoire d'Etudes sur l'Acquisition et la Pathologie du Langage chez l'enfant, CNRS, Universit? Ren? Descartes, Paris V. Amr H.Ibrahim, Universit? de Franche-comt?, CRFLFC du Centre Tesni?re. Anne Salazar-Orvig, Universit? Ren? Descartes, Paris V. Coordonn?es des personnes ? contacter pour l'organisation mat?rielle et scientifique : Claire Martinot : cmartinot at aol.com 8, rue de Verdun, esc.12 F - 94500 Champigny-sur-Marne (France) Amr Ibrahim : amr.ibrahim1 at libertysurf.fr 5, rue Louis-L?on Lepoutre F - 94130 Nogent-sur-Marne (France) ==================================================================== Call for papers International Symposium Acquisition and construction of meaning in crosslinguistic perspective Universit? Ren? Descartes, Paris V 14-15 December 2001 Organizer: Claire Martinot with the support of La Cellule de Recherche Fondamentale en Linguistique fran?aise et Compar?e (CRFLFC, Centre Tesni?re of the University of Franche-Comt?, Group for Basic Research in French and Comparative Linguistics, EA 2283) and Le Laboratoire d'Etudes sur l'Acquisition et la Pathologie du Langage chez l'enfant (LEAPLE, Laboratory for the Study of Children's Language Acquisition and Disorders, UMR 8606 of CNRS) In the course of acquiring their native language, children perform partial transformations on the terms which they encounter. In the case of linguistic items, these transformations often have the effect of changing the sense of the original expression. This process of reformulation by substituting-rewording plays an important role in language development, particularly in the period of later acquisitions, where they constitute evidence for children's productive abilities. We assume that such "acquisition by reformulation" will not take the same form across languages, since languages differ in the interrelations they entail between grammar and the lexicon. Crossslinguistic analysis of reformulations should throw light on the impact of particular target languages on acquisition while at the same time they could point to generalized directions in the patterning of reformulations, as a means of characterizing children's productions in the relatively little-researched domain of late acquisitions. In order for participants in the symposium to have available comparable analyses of children's productions in different languages, we would like speakers to present their findings based on the same research design, by applying procedures that have already been tried out for French. The research design as translated into English and the story 'Deux amis malheureux' as translated into English, German, Hebrew, or Italian can be obtained from Claire Martinot : cmartinot at aol.com. The research design and the story as translated into Arabic can be obtained from Amr Ibrahim : amr.ibrahim1 at libertysurf.fr. Translations of the same story for use with other languages will be greatly appreciated, we will put it at the disposal of any other researcher in the same language so that there will not be more than one translation in each language. The second call will list available languages. The research methodology involves retelling of the story. The idea is to compare the retellings of the same story produced by children of different ages (from around 4 to 12 years) and to analyse all cases of reformulation (rewording or paraphrase) of the original story in the which they produce. We hope that the symposium will also stimulate research on languages that have not been widely studied in acquisitional perspective, as in the case of Arabic, for example. Information for Participants Abstracts should be 800 to 1000 words in length, and should present the research questions and a brief description of the language in which the research is conducted. Three copies of abstracts, two without any name, should be sent by electronic or regular mail to Claire Martinot or Amr Ibrahim by March 1st, 2001. You will be informed by the end of March of acceptance or rejection. A second circular will be sent out in April with information concerning travel and accommodation. Presentations of 40 minutes in length will be given at a plenary session, preferably in French. Participants who present in another language should provide a summary of their paper in French. We plan to publish a book of the proceedings. Texts to be included in the collection will be reviewed by outside readers. Participation: 200 F for faculty members, free for students Scientific Committee : Michel Barbot, Universit? Marc Bloch, Strasbourg II Ruth A.Berman, University of Tel Aviv Eve V.Clark, Stanford University Maya Hickmann, Laboratoire Cognition et D?veloppement, CNRS, Universit? Ren? Descartes, Paris V. Christian Hudelot, Laboratoire d'Etudes sur l'Acquisition et la Pathologie du Langage chez l'enfant, CNRS, Universit? Ren? Descartes, Paris V. Amr H.Ibrahim, Universit? de Franche-comt?, CRFLFC du Centre Tesni?re. Anne Salazar-Orvig, Universit? Ren? Descartes, Paris V. Coordinators to be consulted on practical and academic matters: Claire Martinot :cmartinot at aol.com 8, rue de Verdun, esc 12 F - 94500 Champigny-sur-Marne (France) Amr Ibrahim :amr.ibrahim1 at libertysurf.fr 5, rue Louis-L?on Lepoutre F - 94130 Nogent-sur-Marne (France) -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 10426 bytes Desc: not available URL: From BennettK at twsuvm.uc.twsu.edu Wed Dec 13 19:19:58 2000 From: BennettK at twsuvm.uc.twsu.edu (Tina Bennett-Kastor) Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2000 13:19:58 -0600 Subject: data on elderly and Alzheimer's speakers In-Reply-To: Message-ID: This is slightly tangential, but I think relevant. I believe that a colleague of mine in the Dept. of Psychology has done some research on working memory tasks in Alzheimer's subjects. She used linguistic data, and possibly narrative data. Her name is Marilyn Turner, and her address is mlturner at twsu.edu. Also, One'simo Juncos Rabada'n at the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela has examined narrative skills in elderly Spanish-speaking (and Galician??) subjects. His address is pejuncos at usc.es -Tina Bennett-Kastor At 11:55 AM 12/8/00 -0500, Nan Ratner wrote: >A student of mine is planning to do a thesis on characteristics of narratives (Frogs) produced by normal elderly and Alzheimer's speakers. Does anyone know of any data currently available on this topic? > >Nan > > >Nan Bernstein Ratner, Ed.D. >Chairman >Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences >University of Maryland >College Park, MD 20742 > >301-405-4217 >301-314-2023 (FAX) > >Steering Committee Coordinator, >Special Interest Division 4 : Fluency and Fluency Disorders >American Speech-Language and Hearing Association > > >nratner at hesp.umd.edu > > > > From lauramingoia at tiscalinet.it Sat Dec 16 18:11:34 2000 From: lauramingoia at tiscalinet.it (Laura Mingoia) Date: Sat, 16 Dec 2000 19:11:34 +0100 Subject: criteria of comparison Message-ID: Hello everybody! I'm Laura and I would like to ask you an opinion. In my dissertation I'm going to study the problem of the acquisition of language in Italian and English normal and languaged impaired children. Do you think that it is better to compare the different data for MLU counted in morphemes, in words or for age of the children? I know that this is a difficult question to solve and that many articles dealing with it have been written, but I would like to have also your opinion. Thank you very much, LAURA lauramingoia at tiscalinet.it -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From slobin at cogsci.berkeley.edu Sat Dec 16 19:57:35 2000 From: slobin at cogsci.berkeley.edu (Dan I. SLOBIN) Date: Sat, 16 Dec 2000 11:57:35 -0800 Subject: criteria of comparison In-Reply-To: <007b01c0678c$068a8e80$f1430b3e@lauraalbi> Message-ID: There are unsolvable problems, in my opinion, in attempting MLU counts in a language like Italian, that has inflections that conflate several meaning elements. For example, how many morphemes--from a learner's point of view--are contained in "i ragazzi"? The actual count is quite high: i = definite article, masculine, plural ragazzi = boy, masculine, plural That is six morphemes for 'the boy-s', which counts as three morphemes in English. Similar issues arise with regard to adjectives and verbs (e.g., do you count four morphemes for "parlo": speak, 1st-person, singular, present?). An MLU count for an individual child only makes sense if you know whether the morphemes in question are productive--that is, whether they can be applied across a range of lexical items, and especially if they can be applied to new lexical items (real or nonce). Lacking a measure of productivity, a count in words might be better. But then you'd have to attend to what kinds of words are involved (i.e., part of speech) as well as the possibility of "amalgams." I would prefer a more careful breakdown of the grammatical morphemes that are productively used by each chid being investigated. -Dan Slobin Dept of Psychology University of California, Berkeley On Sat, 16 Dec 2000, Laura Mingoia wrote: > Hello everybody! > I'm Laura and I would like to ask you an opinion. In my dissertation I'm going to study the problem of the acquisition of language in Italian and English normal and languaged impaired children. Do you think that it is better to compare the different data for MLU counted in morphemes, in words or for age of the children? > > I know that this is a difficult question to solve and that many articles dealing with it have been written, but I would like to have also your opinion. Thank you very much, > > LAURA > lauramingoia at tiscalinet.it > From msyonata at pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il Sat Dec 16 20:21:25 2000 From: msyonata at pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il (Yonata Levy) Date: Sat, 16 Dec 2000 22:21:25 +0200 Subject: criteria of comparison Message-ID: Similar issues need to be addressed when one tries to count MLU in Hebrew. Dromi and Berman have proposed a system many years ago. In our studies we have adopted much of what they propose but also changed it to some extent. Here are some examples of what we do for Hebrew: In view of the problems that Dan raised wrt determining productivity and since morphemes are conflated and since the aim is to arrive at a measure which will be comparable to other languages so that one can do cross-linguistic studies the decision was to never give any single word more than - 2. Furthermore, certain forms will never receive more than 1 because they can be too easily picked out from the input. For example, the form that the child is being addressed with. So a girl using an adjective in the feminine will only get 1 for it. A boy will get 2. Nobody gets more than 1 for the canonical verb form (which in Hebrew is 3rd singular) etc. I believe such decisions are needed, even if they seem ad hoc at times, since the aim is to arrive at a reliable comparative measure. Yonata. From pyersqr at ukans.edu Sat Dec 16 22:59:09 2000 From: pyersqr at ukans.edu (Clifton Pye) Date: Sat, 16 Dec 2000 16:59:09 -0600 Subject: criteria of comparison Message-ID: Comparing language acquisition across languages is impossible to do directly. There are bound to be too many uncontrolled variables affecting the measurement such as the average number of syllables and consonants in the word or the variety of obligatory morphemes. Dan's idea of using bilingual subjects is the best way to control for some of these variables as long as the children are acquiring the languages simultaneously. Another possibility is to adopt an mlu scale that is relative to the mlu of adults. If adult speakers of a language have an average mlu of 8 and the child has an mlu of 2, the mlu of the child relative to the adult would be 2/8 or .25. Comparing relative mlus across English and Italian would show how far the children had progressed toward the adult standard in each language. Even relative mlu scales won't allow deep comparisons across languages since languages emphasize their grammatical features in different ways. The Sesotho use of passives in subject questions is a good example as are the Korean locative verbs. Clifton Pye The University of Kansas At 07:11 PM 12/16/2000 +0100, you wrote: >Hello everybody! >I'm Laura and I would like to ask you an opinion. In my dissertation I'm going to study the problem of the acquisition of language in Italian and English normal and languaged impaired children. Do you think that it is better to compare the different data for MLU counted in morphemes, in words or for age of the children? > >I know that this is a difficult question to solve and that many articles dealing with it have been written, but I would like to have also your opinion. Thank you very much, > >LAURA From gleason at bu.edu Sat Dec 16 23:04:16 2000 From: gleason at bu.edu (Jean Berko Gleason) Date: Sat, 16 Dec 2000 18:04:16 -0500 Subject: Inner State Frogs Message-ID: One of our graduate students is conducting a study in Japan of Inner State Words in the speech of Japanese moms to their language-learning children, as well as of the emerging ISWs in the speech of the children. We thought it might be interesting if as part of her study she used a wordless picture book, like Frog Where Are You?, especially if there are English data on inner state words in Frog Stories that could be compared with the Japanese data she is collecting. So, question: has anyone got such data on parents reading the story to kids with possible coding of ISWs? (We once used another Mercer Mayer book, The Great Cat Chase, and have some data on inner state words there, but our subjects were a bit older than the 2-3 year olds she is seeing.) -- thanks jean Jean Berko Gleason Boston University From macswan at asu.edu Tue Dec 19 01:36:06 2000 From: macswan at asu.edu (Jeff MacSwan) Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2000 18:36:06 -0700 Subject: Ph.D. Program in Language and Literacy, ASU College of Education In-Reply-To: <003401c068ec$369e79e0$832beacb@kongjue.ac.kr> Message-ID: Applications are invited for fall 2001 for the Ph.D. in Language and Literacy, part of ASU's Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction, College of Education. A limited number of funding packages are available. For details and information on how to obtain an application, see http://is.asu.edu/coe/langlit/index.html (or call 480/965-4602). The Interdisciplinary Language and Literacy Ph.D. Program in the Division of Curriculum and Instruction at Arizona State University provides opportunities for research and study in one or more of the following: Educational linguistics, bilingualism, second language learning, language diversity, language and literacy education, children?s literature, classroom discourse analysis, gender and literacy, emergent literacy, adolescent literacy, biliteracy, language policy, and other language education topics. PROGRAM GOALS The Language and Literacy Ph.D. Program is designed to produce researchers and teacher educators. The goals of the program are to ? prepare students to critically analyze and conduct research in their area of specialization; and ? prepare students to carry out research, teaching, and service activities associated with faculty positions at institutions of higher education and other professional positions. Some students opt to specialize in research, others pursue careers in teaching or administration, but all are prepared to make individual career decisions based on examined theory in language and literacy and a critical view of research. THE CURRICULUM Our doctoral curriculum typically requires at least three years of graduate study. Students are required to spend one year as fulltime students on campus at Arizona State University. However, all students are encouraged to integrate into the scholarly community on campus as much as possible, and to spend a good amount of time interacting with faculty and other students in the program. The curriculum provides students with a core set of courses, seminars, internships, and research experiences. Each student's program of study builds upon core requirements and is uniquely designed around individual interests, in consultation with the student's advisor. An important feature of the program in Language and Literacy is that students are encouraged to draw on the scholarly resources of the entire university and develop a cross-disciplinary program of study that includes courses from outside the College of Education. REQUIREMENTS The following six domains comprise the Interdisciplinary Language and Literacy Ph.D. Program: Area of Concentration 30 semester hours pertaining to language and literacy education, children?s literature, gender and literacy, emergent literacy, adolescent literature, classroom discourse analysis, educational linguistics, bilingualism and bilingual education, second language learning, language policy, biliteracy, or other language education topics. Cognate Study 12 semester hours are taken to broaden the student's understanding of the conceptual base and issues underlying the study of curriculum and instruction. Students take related work outside their declared areas of concentration. Students are expected to choose courses that have a clear link to their dissertation efforts. Cognate studies can be drawn from a broad range of offerings across the University. Inquiry and Analysis 15 semester hours of empirical analysis and inquiry foundations are required in advanced design and data analysis in quantitative and/or qualitative research methods. Core Requirements in Curriculum and Instruction 6 semester hours of courses (Interdisciplinary Research Seminar in Curriculum and Instruction and Curriculum Theory and Practice) are required as the Curriculum and Instruction core. Practicum and Integrative/Professional Development Seminars 6 semester hours of research and University teaching internships are required to broaden the training and experience of students. Dissertation and Independent Research 24 semester units of dissertation and independent research leading to completion of an approved dissertation are required. Doctoral students are also encouraged to participate in the Preparing Future Faculty Program offered by ASU's Graduate College. This program consists of two semester hours in which students learn faculty roles and responsibilities and participate in an ongoing series of integrative and collaborative seminars coordinated with the Graduate College. Students have the opportunity to develop and participate in interdisciplinary teaching, research, and service activities. MENTORS Dr. Beatriz Arias (Ph.D., Stanford University): Language policy, bilingual teacher preparation, secondary bilingual education. bea at asu.edu Dr. James Christie (Ph.D., Claremont Graduate School): Emergent literacy. jchristie at asu.edu Dr. Carol Christine (Ph.D., Arizona State University): Language and literacy education, children?s literature. caroljc at asu.edu Dr. Carole Edelsky (Ph.D., University of New Mexico): Language education and classroom discourse, language and gender. edelsky at asu.edu Dr. Billie Enz (Ph.D., Arizona State University): Emergent literacy, language acquisition. bjenz at asu.edu Dr. Christian Faltis (Ph.D., Stanford University): Bilingualism, second language acquisition, secondary bilingual education. cfaltis at asu.edu Dr. Gustavo Fischman (Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles): Cultural studies, international and comparative education. fischman at asu.edu Dr. Barbara Guzzetti (Ph.D., University of Colorado): Gender and literacy, adolescent literacy. guzzetti at asu.edu Dr. Sarah Hudelson (Ph.D., University of Texas, Austin): Biliteracy, second language acquisition. sarahh at asu.edu Dr. Jeff MacSwan (Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles): Bilingualism, code switching, educational linguistics, language assessment policy for linguistic minorities. macswan at asu.edu Dr. Jeff McQuillan (Ph.D., University of Southern California): Language and literacy education, second language learning. jeff.mcquillan at asu.edu Dr. Alleen P. Nilson (Ph.D., University of Iowa): Adolescent literature, language issues. alleen.nilsen at asu.edu Dr. Kellie Rolstad (Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles): Dual language education, language diversity, educational linguistics, elementary language arts. rolstad at asu.edu Dr. Karen Smith (Ph.D., Arizona State University): Language and literacy education, language policy. karen.smith2 at asu.edu Dr. Lucy Tse (Ph.D., University of Southern California): Second language learning, bilingualism, and biliteracy. lucy.tse at asu.edu Dr. Josephine Peyton Young (Ph.D., University of Georgia): Adolescent literacy, critical literacy, and gender and literacy. joyoung at asu.edu Dr. Terrence G. Wiley (Ph.D., University of Southern California): Language policy, second language acquisition, bilingualism, literacy, language diversity. twiley at asu.edu From ann at hawaii.edu Sun Dec 17 17:27:04 2000 From: ann at hawaii.edu (Ann Peters) Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2000 07:27:04 -1000 Subject: MLU and comparison criteria Message-ID: While I agree with the points made by Dan and Yonata, I'd like to add a couple more thoughts. One way to look at MLU is to consider how many *bits of meaning* are being strung together. This is the issue Dan was addressing. Another way is to consider how many *segmentable pieces* of language are being strung together. My feeling is that we need to think about *both* kinds of measures. >From this point of view, to take Dan's examples: ragazz-i probably contains 2 'pieces' parl-o probably contains 2 as well - at least for adults. Although I'd guess that the Hebrew restriction on at most 2 "morphemes" for any word probably works fine for Hebrew and Italian, it wouldn't do for Turkish or Finnish. In other words, the degree of 'agglutinativity' of a language is also important. I agree with Dan's and Yonata's points about productivity. ann **************************** Dr. Ann M. Peters, Professor Department of Linguistics University of Hawai`i email: ann at hawaii.edu 1890 East West Road, Rm 569 phone: 808 956-3241 Honolulu, HI 96822 fax: 808 956-9166 http://www2.hawaii.edu/~ann/ From jordan.z at chula.ac.th Tue Dec 19 02:50:32 2000 From: jordan.z at chula.ac.th (Jordan Zlatev) Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 09:50:32 +0700 Subject: CFP: Epigenetic Robotics Message-ID: Dear INFO-CHILDES and others, Please help distribute this annoucement to anyone interested in sitiated embodied cognition and language. Best, Jordan Zlatev PLEASE POST * PLEASE POST * PLEASE POST * PLEASE POST * PLEASE POST ********************************************************************* Call for Papers First International Workshop on Epigenetic Robotics: Modeling Cognitive Development in Robotic Systems September 17-18, 2001 Lund, Sweden During the last few years we have witnessed the mutual rapprochement of two traditionally very different fields of study: developmental psychology and robotics. This has come with the realization in large parts of the cognitive science community that true intelligence in natural and (possibly) artificial systems presupposes 3 crucial properties: (a) the *embodiment* of the system, (b) its *situatedness* in a physical and social environment and (c) a prolonged *epigenetic developmental process* through which increasingly more complex cognitive structures emerge in the system as a result of interactions with the physical and social environment. To designate this new field we use the term *epigenesis*, introduced in psychology by the great 20th century developmentalist Jean Piaget to refer to such development, determined primarily by interaction rather than genes. However, we believe that Piaget?s emphasis on the importance of sensorimotor interaction needs to be complemented with what is just as (and perhaps more) important for development: *social interaction*, as emphasized by another important figure of 20th century developmental psychology, Lev Vygotsky. In the emergent field of Epigenetic Robotics the interests of psychologists and roboticists meet. The former are in a position to provide the detailed empirical findings and theoretical generalizations that can guide the implementations of robotic systems capable of cognitive (including behavioral and social) development. Conversely, these implementations can help clarify, evaluate, and even develop psychological theories, which due to the complexity of the interactional processes involved have hitherto remained somewhat speculative. We are thus pleased to invite the submission of papers to the *First International Workshop on Epigenetic Robotics: Modeling Cognitive Development in Robotic Systems*, which we hope to allow researchers working in this new interdisciplinary field to share and discuss theoretical frameworks, methodologies, results and problems. Subject areas include, but are not limited to: * The role of motivation, emotions and value systems in development * The development of sensorimotor schemata and an "ecological self" * The development of joint attention * The development of imitation and social learning * The development of mind-reading/theory of mind * The development of non-verbal and verbal communication * The development of shared meaning and symbolic reference * The development of consciousness and self-awareness * The development of a concept of "person" and social relationships * Developmental disorders (Autism, Williams? Syndrome, ADHD/DAMP) * The interaction between innate structures and experience in development The workshop, sponsored by Commuications Research Laboratory, Japan,will be held for on September 17-18 in the charming town of Lund in southern Sweden, home of one of the oldest universities of Northern Europe, on September 17-18, just preceding the Fourth European Workshop on Advanced Mobile Robots (EUROBOT'01). Invited Speakers * Christopher Sinha (Institute of Language and Communication, University of Southern Denmark, Odense) * To be announced Organizing Committee * Christian Balkenius (Cognitive Science, Lund University, Sweden) * Cynthia Breazeal (Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, MIT, USA) * Kerstin Dautenhahn (Adaptive Systems, The University of Hertfordshire, UK) * Hideki Kozima (Commuications Research Laboratory, Japan) * Jordan Zlatev (Linguistics, Lund University, Sweden) Submissions Papers not exceeding 8 pages should be submitted electronically (PDF or PS) as attachment files to Hideki Kozima Further instructions to authors will be posted on the conference home page: http://www.lucs.lu.se/epigenetic-robotics Important Dates April 15, 2001: Submission of papers June 15, 2001: Notification of acceptance August 1, 2001: Deadline for camera-ready papers September 17-18, 2001: Workshop -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From skklla at uta.fi Tue Dec 19 07:15:51 2000 From: skklla at uta.fi (Klaus Laalo) Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 09:15:51 +0200 Subject: criteria of comparison In-Reply-To: <000401c0679d$c6b745c0$45058b80@ac.il.huji.ac.il> Message-ID: On Sat, 16 Dec 2000, Yonata Levy wrote: > Similar issues need to be addressed when one tries to count MLU in Hebrew. > Dromi and Berman have proposed a system many years ago. In our studies we > have adopted much of what they propose but also changed it to some extent. > Here are some examples of what we do for Hebrew: > In view of the problems that Dan raised wrt determining productivity and > since morphemes are conflated and since the aim is to arrive at a measure > which will be comparable to other languages so that one can do > cross-linguistic studies the decision was to never give any single word more > than - 2. Furthermore, certain forms will never receive more than 1 because > they can be too easily picked out from the input. For example, the form that > the child is being addressed with. So a girl using an adjective in the > feminine will only get 1 for it. A boy will get 2. Nobody gets more than 1 > for the canonical verb form (which in Hebrew is 3rd singular) etc. I believe > such decisions are needed, even if they seem ad hoc at times, since the aim > is to arrive at a reliable comparative measure. > Yonata. > I would like to add one point about canonical verb forms from the point of view of Finnish language: the 3rd singular present indicative is in Finnish the basic verb form, and it consists of the stem + vowel lengthening, e.g. sano+o 'says/is saying', otta+a 'takes/is taking'. I would count 2 morphemes for these forms, because the vowel lengthening is analogically spread in child language to verbs which don't have it in Standard Finnish, e.g. to one-syllabics (e.g. juo+o 'drinks/is drinking'; in my view, these analogies show that the child can find the morpheme of 3rd person, the vowel lengthening. Klaus Laalo professor of Finnish language University of Tampere From a.karmiloff-smith at ich.ucl.ac.uk Tue Dec 19 08:18:05 2000 From: a.karmiloff-smith at ich.ucl.ac.uk (Annette Karmiloff-Smith) Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 08:18:05 +0000 Subject: MLU and comparison criteria In-Reply-To: Message-ID: The problem that remains for me mentioned by Ann Peters "at least for adults". Surely MLU calculations are an attempt to get at what the linguistic representations are "for the child". So, it could be that raggazzi is a plural for the child of raggazzo and that "for the child" there is a representational relationship between the two, but it could be that the child has learnt "raggazzi" as an unanalyzed whole linked to a specific context. In other words, the child could be matching the phonology rather than the morphology. I have no solution except there may be clauses in intonation or the rest of each child's particular productions, etc., but the problem is real in my view, and may be more so for highly agglutinating languages. Annette At 7:27 am -1000 17/12/00, Ann Peters wrote: >While I agree with the points made by Dan and Yonata, I'd like to add a >couple more thoughts. One way to look at MLU is to consider how many *bits >of meaning* are being strung together. This is the issue Dan was >addressing. >Another way is to consider how many *segmentable pieces* of language are >being strung together. My feeling is that we need to think about *both* >kinds of measures. >>From this point of view, to take Dan's examples: > ragazz-i probably contains 2 'pieces' > parl-o probably contains 2 as well - at least for adults. >Although I'd guess that the Hebrew restriction on at most 2 >"morphemes" for any word probably works fine for Hebrew and Italian, it >wouldn't do for Turkish or Finnish. In other words, the degree of >'agglutinativity' of a language is also important. >I agree with Dan's and Yonata's points about productivity. >ann > > >**************************** >Dr. Ann M. Peters, Professor >Department of Linguistics >University of Hawai`i email: ann at hawaii.edu >1890 East West Road, Rm 569 phone: 808 956-3241 >Honolulu, HI 96822 fax: 808 956-9166 >http://www2.hawaii.edu/~ann/ -- ________________________________________________________________ Professor A.Karmiloff-Smith, FBA, FMedSci, FRSA, MAE, C.Psychol. Head, Neurocognitive Development Unit, Institute of Child Health, 30 Guilford Street, London WC1N 1EH, U.K. tel: 0207 905 2754 fax: 0207 242 7717 http://www.ich.ucl.ac.uk/units/ncdu/NDU_homepage.htm ________________________________________________________________ From msyonata at pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il Tue Dec 19 08:34:39 2000 From: msyonata at pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il (Yonata Levy) Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 10:34:39 +0200 Subject: MLU and comparison criteria Message-ID: Well, this is where productivity comes in -- if there is evidence in the corpus of the child using the pl. - I - on other nouns besides ragazzi then you are safe, I think, assuming that he should be given credit for the pl. ending. So, we in our coding make such decisions and often do not give children credit for morphological markings which they produce rarely or which are tied to specific words. (and the same problem may come up with certain syntactic constructions that are seen only once or twice). We also do not give credit for the use of the form that the child is typically being addressed with - and the reasons are the same, of course. I remind you that in addition to Brown's 90% criterion of productivity there also the other criteria of a feature used at least 3 times *in a different context* within the same file. This might offer a solution in some cases. Yonata. From Edy.Veneziano at clsh.univ-nancy2.fr Tue Dec 19 08:55:07 2000 From: Edy.Veneziano at clsh.univ-nancy2.fr (Edy Veneziano) Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 09:55:07 +0100 Subject: MLU and comparison criteria Message-ID: Indeed this is a crucial point that requires fine analytical tools to be answered. And to my mind, depending on developmental level, the answer might be only probabilistic rather than definite (rules of the thumb like those mentioned by Yonata help to go on but do not solve the basic issues). One of the things that I think should be avoided is to consider productions in isolation, something that unfortunately may occur with online ways of coding. One bit of evidence that might be used more widely consists in looking for morphologically relevant variation in one and the same type of word, although also this is not bullet-proof because each one of the items could be learned as a separate entry. However, considerations of the overall trend in the child's production might provide a further crucial hint. A more encompassing system approach to the analysis of children's productions might be a revealing useful tool in this thorny domain. Edy Annette Karmiloff-Smith wrote: > The problem that remains for me mentioned by Ann Peters "at least for adults". > Surely MLU calculations are an attempt to get at what the linguistic > representations > are "for the child". So, it could be that raggazzi is a plural for > the child of raggazzo > and that "for the child" there is a representational relationship > between the two, > but it could be that the child has learnt "raggazzi" as an unanalyzed > whole linked to a > specific context. In other words, the child could be matching the > phonology rather than > the morphology. I have no solution except there may be clauses in > intonation or the > rest of each child's particular productions, etc., but the problem is > real in my view, > and may be more so for highly agglutinating languages. > Annette -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msyonata at pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il Tue Dec 19 14:54:41 2000 From: msyonata at pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il (Yonata Levy) Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 16:54:41 +0200 Subject: MLU and comparison criteria Message-ID: Two points: I have always thought about MLU as a measure relevant to production. Is that not so? also, MLU is a heuristic, an a-theoretical measure that is meant to allow us to choose controls in a sensible way. If we had a few good rules of thumb we could avoid methodological mistakes. Yonata. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mboehning at yahoo.de Tue Dec 19 15:04:10 2000 From: mboehning at yahoo.de (=?iso-8859-1?q?Marita=20Boehning?=) Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 16:04:10 +0100 Subject: Phonological short term memory in infants Message-ID: Dear Info-CHILDES, my colleagues and I are planning to create an experiment on phonological short term memory in infants (11 months). The experiment is part of a study on early language acquisition. As the children are preverbal we will use the preferential head turning paradigm. Has anybody done anything like this or knows any useful references? Or is there any data on how much (i.e. how many syllables) children that age can remember? Thank you! Marita B?hning, Julia Siegm?ller, Dr. Barbara H?hle Dept. of Linguistics University of Potsdam Germany __________________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Gesendet von Yahoo! Mail - http://mail.yahoo.de Gratis zum Million?r! - http://10millionenspiel.yahoo.de From elaine at gizmo.usc.edu Tue Dec 19 19:21:22 2000 From: elaine at gizmo.usc.edu (Elaine Andersen) Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 11:21:22 -0800 Subject: Lecturer position Message-ID: The Department of Linguistics at the University of Southern California is seeking a qualified instructor for an upper-division undergraduate course in Child Language Acquisition during the Spring 2001 semester (January 9 - May 1). Candidates must have a Ph.D., and a strong linguistics teaching record is preferred. A description of the course follows: LING 405 Child Language Acquisition: Universal characteristics of child language; stages of acquisition of phonology, syntax, semantics; processes and dimensions of development; psychological mechanisms; communicative styles. The course is scheduled to meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 2-3:20 pm, and expected enrollment is 15 students. Interested candidates, please contact Dr. Elaine Andersen (elaine at gizmo.usc.edu) as soon as possible. Please copy message to melanie at gizmo.usc.edu and zubizarr at usc.edu. Applications, including a letter of application, curriculum vita, and teaching evaluations (when possible), may be sent to: USC Department of Linguistics Child Language Instructor Search 3601 Watt Way, GFS 301 Los Angeles, CA 90089-1693 ********************************* Elaine S. Andersen Professor Linguistics, Neuroscience Hedco Neuroscience Program HNB 18 University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA 90089-2520 elaine at gizmo.usc.edu phone: 213 740-9192 fax: 213 740-5687 ********************************* From lhewitt at bgnet.bgsu.edu Tue Dec 19 21:04:06 2000 From: lhewitt at bgnet.bgsu.edu (Lynne Hewitt) Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 16:04:06 -0500 Subject: criteria of comparison Message-ID: An important methodological problem in child language research dealing with specific language impairment is matching to appropriate reference groups. While so-called "language-matching" has been preferred in the literature (usually accomplished in English via MLU and a formal language test of some sort), there are arguments in favor of age matching. A clear problem with MLU-matched samples is that they are matched on one aspect of language only. Using MLU in this way institutionalizes, albeit in hidden form, the notion that MLU is a direct probe of total language ability. This notion is highly questionable, however one measures MLU. Depending on what you are studying, matching for MLU may or may not provide you with an appropriate reference group. For a discussion of this problem see the following article, which ends by advocating language matches as less confounded: Plante, Elena; Swisher, Linda; Kiernan, Barbara; Restrepo, Maria Adelaida (1993). Language matches: Illuminating or confounding? Journal of Speech & Hearing Research, 36(4), 772-776 Lynne E. Hewitt, Ph.D., CCC-SLP Assistant Professor Dept. of Communication Disorders 251 Health Center Bldg. Bowling Green State University Bowling Green, OH 43403 Phone: 419-372-7181 Fax: 419-372-8089 From giyer at crl.ucsd.edu Tue Dec 19 22:28:00 2000 From: giyer at crl.ucsd.edu (Gowri Iyer) Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 14:28:00 -0800 Subject: Psycholinguistic research in India Message-ID: Dear Info-Childes members, I am a third year doctoral student from India enrolled in the US in an interdisciplinary doctoral program in Language and Communicative Disorders at San Diego State University and the University of California, San Diego ( http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/dept/chhs/cd/cd_degree_phd_general.html). Thus far my research has focused on language acquisition and real-time language processing in typically-developing children and adults. My goal is to apply this knowledge to further our understanding of the brain bases of language breakdown in clinical populations using both behavioral (on-line reaction time paradigms) and neural imaging techniques (such as fMRI). I am also interested in bilingual/multilingual contexts especially with regard to Indian languages (specifically Dravidian languages or Hindi/Urdu). I will be travelling to India in the next month to meet with researchers in the hopes of setting up a cross-linguistic research project. During the past year, I have been examining the literature on language acquisition in Indian languages/dialects and have found very little at this point. I am turning to the CHILDES community in the hope that some of you may be able to direct me towards language acquisition studies or child language researchers in Indian languages. Thanks in advance. I will post the information I get so that others who might be interested may also have access to it..... Sincerely, Gowri Iyer P.S. Happy Holidays!!! ******************************************************* Gowri K. Iyer ~3rd Year PhD., Joint Doctoral Program "Language & Communicative Disorders" UCSD & SDSU e-mail: giyer at crl.ucsd.edu Neuropsychology Laboratory 6330 Alvarado Court, Suite 201, Room E San Diego State University San Diego, CA 92182-1518 Phone: 619-594-8669 FAX: 619-594-4570 Center for Research in Language Cognitive Science Building University of California, San Diego 9500 Gilman Dr., Dept. 0526 La Jolla, CA 92093-0526 Phone: 858-534-5227 858-534-8046 FAX: 858-534-6788 ********************************************************* From lauramingoia at tiscalinet.it Mon Dec 18 09:32:47 2000 From: lauramingoia at tiscalinet.it (Laura Mingoia) Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2000 10:32:47 +0100 Subject: Thank you very much and Merry Christmas! Message-ID: Thank you very much for your answer. I will follow your advice not to count morphemes crosslinguistically. I would like also to wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year. LAURA lauramingoia at tiscalinet.it -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Sophie.Willemin at lettres.unine.ch Thu Dec 21 09:01:39 2000 From: Sophie.Willemin at lettres.unine.ch (Sophie Willemin) Date: Thu, 21 Dec 2000 10:01:39 +0100 Subject: pragmatic assessment Message-ID: A short request... I am looking for references about assessing conversation and pragmatic disability in children. Thank for your suggestions (in french, english or german...) Sophie Willemin assistante Universit? de Neuch?tel Institut d'Orthophonie - Logop?die Suisse From macw at cmu.edu Tue Dec 26 08:31:53 2000 From: macw at cmu.edu (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Tue, 26 Dec 2000 16:31:53 +0800 Subject: Thai Frogs Message-ID: Dear Info-CHILDES, I am happy to announce the addition to the CHILDES database of a new set of Frog Story narrative transcripts from Thai, donated by Jordan Zlatev of Lund University and Peerapat YangKlang of Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok. The corpus is done in CHAT format and follows additional guidelines for Frog Story as formulated by Berman and Slobin. The readme for the corpus is as follows. Some of the formatting of tables is a bit off because of the conversion from FrameMaker. However, the original documentation for this corpus, along with all the other corpora added in 2000 can be found in the electronic version of the database manual on the childes.psy.cmu.edu server. The data include both a romanized transcription and a transcript in Thai orthography. However, to read the Thai orthography you need to use a specific font on Windows called Cordia. --Brian MacWhinney Thai Corpus Zlatev, Jordan Lund University jordan_zlatev at lucs.lu.se Yangkland, Peerapat Department of Linguistics Chulalongkom University Bangkok, Thailand This data was collected as part of the First Language Acquisition of Thai project, funded by The Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education (STINT) and hosted by the Department of Linguistics, Chulalongkorn, Thailand during 2000. Though our project focused on the development of spatial expressions in Thai, we made a serious effort to make the data as consistent and general as possible so that it could be used for other studies as well. We would also like to thank everyone who helped us carry out the collection and transcription of this data: Janich Feangfu, Maneeya Sangjan, Mingmit Sriprasit, Soraya Osathanonda, Martha Karrebaek Hentze and Katarina Lindblom. The child data was collected in three Bangkok schools and the adult data was collected from students of Chulalongkorn University. The interviewer, always a native Thai speaker, first showed the Frog Story book to the subject and let him scan through it by himself for about 5 minutes. For the children, the instruction were approximately as follows: This story is about a boy, his dog, and a frog. I?ll let you take a look at the pictures of the story, first. Then, I will ask you to tell me the story, picture by picture. The interviewer sometimes encouraged the child to proceed with the story. These utterances of the interviewer have not been transcribed. Even though we tried to keep the elicitation conditions as uniform as possible, there were inevitable differences due to the fact that the data was collected by 5 different interviewers. (The name of the interviewer appears first in the @Transcriber list.) Transcription Each recorded narrative was transcribed in standard Thai orthography, in almost all cases by the person, who performed the interview. The Thai transcription was then converted into a phonemic notation via the semi-automatic Thai Transcription program, developed at the Department of Linguistics, Chulalongkorn University. The consonsants are as follows: Thai Consonants labial postdental palatal velar glottal +voice stop b d -voice -asp p t c k ? -voice +asp ph th ch kh spirants f s h semivowel w j nasal m n N lateral l trill r The vowels are as follows: Thai Vowels Front Central Back Close i U u Mid e q o Open x a O Tones were marked as: Mid: 0, Low: 1, Falling: 2, High: 3, Rising: 4. Due to requirements of CHAT, the ? for glottal stop was omitted. The presence of the glottal stop is nevertheless derivable from the data since Thai syllables can not begin with a vowel or end with a short vowel. Whenever that seems to be the case in the data, there is an ?invisible? glottal stop before the initial vowel or after the final short vowel. Segmentation The transliteration was placed on the main tier, and the transcription in Thai orthography, using font Cordia UPC 14 (Win95:CordiaUPC:-19:222), was placed on a dependent tier. Thai orthography does not place spaces between words and the computer program does not perform word segmentation so word-segmentation had to be performed manually. Compound expressions sometimes posed problems. In deciding how to treat a multi-syllabic word, we used the following criteria: 1. One simple word IFF the two (or more) syllables do not have any clear separate meaning (e.g. naa2taaN1 ?window?) 2. One complex word (?+? between the syllables) IFF the syllables have clear separate meaning, but the sum of the parts does not equal the whole (e.g. phuu2+jaj1 ?adult?, dek1+chaaj0 ?boy?) 3. Noun phrase: (SPACE between the parts) IFF the parts have separate meaning, BUT the parts combine systematically to give the meaning of the whole: (raN0 phUN2 ?bee hive? maa4 noj4 ?little dog?) CHAT Formatting The rough phonemic transcription was then checked against the original tape recordings and corrections were made. Deviations from standard pronunciation were included, using the convention offered by CHAT, placing the standard in square brackets behind pronounced form, e.g. laN0 [: raN0]. We then listened through the tape once more in order to mark all pauses: short (#) and long (##) and extra-long vowels, e.g. maa:4. Repetitions and re-tracings were marked using the CHAT conventions, i.e. the repeated material was surrounded by <> and followed by [/], [//] or [///]. Following the CHAT convention, each main line was made to include only one utterance ? defined with a combination of phonetic and grammatical criteria. Thus, a line/utterance ends when both conditions are met: 1. There is short pause (#), a long pause (##), or a ?vowel lengthening?, and 2. This coincides with the end of a clause, marked as [c]. If only (1) is met, the pause is marked within the utterance/line. If only (2) is met, [c] marks the end of the clause but not the utterance/line. However, we sometimes allow a line/utterance to end even if there is a word between the pause and clause boundary. Because of the ubiquity of serial verb constructions in Thai, it was not always easy to determine where a clause ends, e.g. the criterion of ?one unitary predication? used by Berman and Slobin (1994) could not be applied. The criteria for deciding that there is a clause boundary were the following: 1. Before a new explicit or implicit subject 2. Before the complementizers thii2 and sUN2 (?that?), when there are verbs both preceding and following these words 3. Before a conjunction (lx3 ?and?, lxxw3 ?and?, lxxw3 kO2 ?and then?, kO2 ?then?, thxx1 ?but?), when there are verbs both preceding and following these words 4. After wa2 ?that?, when there are verbs both preceding and following 5. When a chain of verbs can be interrupted with any conjunction (e.g. lxxw3) Finally, each of the 50 narratives was read though once again by at least two different checkers, correcting for any inconsistencies. Furthermore, a listing of all the words in the corpus was produced using the CLAN command freq +k *.cha +u +r6, and we went through this list word by word, making sure that each word is transcribed consistently throughout the corpus. In addition to standard CHAT codes, we used the %tai dependent tier for the Thai transcription and a double ++ to indicate reduplication as in ?luuk2++luuk2.? Files The files are summarized in the following table. The subjects? names do not appear in the transcripts. Thai Frog Files File Age Sex Date 3a 4;3.8 f 18-FEB-2000 3b 3;11.20 f 18-FEB-2000 3c 4;4.4 m 18-FEB-2000 3d 3;10.12 f 18-FEB-2000 3e 3;11.16 m 18-FEB-2000 3f 4;0.2 f 8-SEP-2000 3g 3;11.19 m 8-SEP-2000 3h 3;6.15 m 8-SEP-2000 3I 3;11.2 m 8-SEP-2000 3j 3;11.22 f 8-SEP-2000 5a 6;02.15 m 18-FEB-2000 5b 5;11.23 m 18-FEB-2000 5c 5;6.01 m 18-FEB-2000 5d 5;06.11 m 18-FEB-2000 5e 5;08.18 f 18-FEB-2000 5f 6;04.1 m 18-FEB-2000 5g 5;10.10 f 18-FEB-2000 5h 5;06.25 m 18-FEB-2000 5I 5;11.21 m 18-FEB-2000 5j 6;01.17 f 16-FEB-2000 9a 8;7.8 m 16-FEB-2000 9b 9;0.21 f 16-FEB-2000 9c 8;10.27 m 16-FEB-2000 9d 9;0.11 f 16-FEB-2000 9e 9;2.0 m 16-FEB-2000 9f 9;3.2 f 16-FEB-2000 9g 8;10.8 m 16-FEB-2000 9h 8;7.0 f 16-FEB-2000 9I 9;0.3 f 16-FEB-2000 9j 9;7.2 f 2-FEB-2000 11a 10;10.16 f 16-FEB-2000 11b 10;05.22 f 16-FEB-2000 11c 11;1.5 f 16-FEB-2000 11d 11;4.20 f 16-FEB-2000 11e 11;2.24 m 16-FEB-2000 11f 10;8.27 m 16-FEB-2000 11g 10;3.22 m 16-FEB-2000 11h 11;0.16 m 16-FEB-2000 11i 10;4.24 f 16-FEB-2000 11j 11;3.18 m 16-FEB-2000 20a 22;8.0 f 15-APR-2000 20b 35;06.0 f 15-APR-2000 20c 21;7.0 f 15-APR-2000 20d 22;11.0 f 15-APR-2000 20e 22;8.0 f 15-APR-2000 20f 22;11.30 m 15-APR-2000 20g 29;01.20 m 15-APR-2000 20h 20;07.11 m 15-APR-2000 20I 23;10.27 m 15-APR-2000 20j 19;06.06 m 15-APR-2000 If you publish any paper based on this data, please send an MS-Word or PDF-formatted version of your paper as an attachment to jordan_zlatev at lucs.lu.se. Users of this data should cite Zlatev, J. and Yangklang, P. (2001) ?Frog stories in Thai: Transcription and Analysis of 50 Thai narratives from 5 age groups?. (forthcoming) From macw at cmu.edu Tue Dec 26 10:29:25 2000 From: macw at cmu.edu (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Tue, 26 Dec 2000 18:29:25 +0800 Subject: Japanese corpus with audio data Message-ID: Dear Info-CHILDES, We have now added a third linked audio corpus to the data at http://childes.psy.cmu.edu/audio/ This directory includes both transcripts on the learning of Japanese from Susanne Miyata's subject Tai. The transcripts are linked to audio files which are included in the directory. This is now the third linked corpus, along with the Bernstein and MacWhinney corpora. Thanks to Susanne for sending us this great resource for the study of the acquisition of Japanese. --Brian MacWhinney Here Susanne's readme file: The TAI Corpus: Longitudinal Speech Data of a Japanese Boy aged 1;5.20 - 3;1.1 v.2000/7 by Susanne Miyata ******************************** ** Please cite: *************** ** Miyata, Susanne (2000). The TAI Corpus: Longitudinal Speech Data of a Japanese Boy aged 1;5.20 - 3;1.1 Bulletin of Shukutoku Junior College 39, 77-85. ******************************** ******************************** Contact Address: Dr. Susanne Miyata Aichi Shukutoku University 23 Sakuragaoka Chikusa-ku Nagoya, 464-8671 Japan smiyata at asu.aasa.ac.jp ******************************** History This data was collected during September, 1993 and June, 1995. Tai was after Ryo, Nao, and Aki (Miyata, 1992, 1993, 1995) the fourth child observed longitudinally. For Tai's observation I applied the same schedule used for the observation of the other children: that is once a week for about one hour at his home while playing with his mother. In the previous observations it had proved convenient for both mother and observer, to fix weekday and time. In Tai's case, we decided to start about 10 o'clock in the morning. After a short period of preparation (video setting, and the indispensable cup of coffee for the observer), we would start with the recordings about 10:30. The recordings were done parallel on mini-discs (audio recording) and 8mm video. This was done out of two reasons. The sound quality for MD was considerably better than for the video. On the other hand, the video recording contains necessary information to be able to judge the utterances of the child. The second reason is the rather low reliability of the equipment. Actually, out of 75 MD recordings, 3 were not usable for different reasons (battery problems especially in the cold season, or tape damage). In this case the additional video-recording can step in for the audio recording. For the recording, the video camera was placed on the TV set in the corner of the 16qm living room. With a fish eye lens, as well as a microphone with an recording angle of 90 degrees most of the sound and movement in this space could be captured. Different from Aki, Tai did not show any interest in the equipment, and we could leave it unattended on the TV set. Although the living room was open to a kitchen of the same size, this room was defined as "play room" used during the observational sessions, and the child accepted it soon. When getting older, he would prepare his toys and the cushion (zabuton) for the observer, and urging us to start with the play session right away.The observer would sit in the second corner, as passive as possible, in order not to disturb the mother-child interaction. The setting was free indoor play. The mother was instructed to 'make the child speak'. In order to obtain as many free spontaneous speech from the child as possible, she was told not to entertain 'not too much' story telling and singing. The recording time was a little more than 40 minutes, and was cut done to 40 minutes in the transcriptions. After the recording we would sit down in the kitchen and discuss the development of the child, his friendship relations, and his health, as well as general issues of education. Transcription The sound data was computerized, and sound-linked to CHAT files (MacWhinney, 2000). The transcription was done on the base of the beforehand linked sound stretches. The easiness to access the sound (it is possible to listen to an utterance just with one mouse-click) proved to be very convenient during this process. The transcription was done in Latin script (Hepburn system) following JCHAT 1.0 Hebon (Oshima-Takane & MacWhinney, 1995). Word separation follows WAKACHI98 (Miyata & Naka, 1998). For unclear sound stretches I have used UNIBET for Japanese (Terao, 1995). Biographical Data Tai was born on April, 10th, 1992 in Nagoya, the firstborn child. His mother was 28 years old at he time of his birth. Pregnancy and delivery were normal. Tai's birth weight was 3330 g. His physical development was normal, and he was healthy throughout the observation. Tai was an active, curious, and sensitive child, with a long concentration span. He displayed a high sense of responsibility. His pronunciation was very clear. At present (March, 2000) he is a healthy and awake first grader with excellent records. Other participants: TMO Mother, called "Kakka", 29 years, housewife, former secretary at a University in Nagoya. Educational level 15 TFA Father, called "Totto", 30 years, research engineer. Educational level 15 SUU Investigator, called "Suuchan", friend of TMO Pseudonyms Tai's parents gave their kind consent for the publication of this data. Although they consented to the use of their actual names, I have decided to anonymize all last names (except my own) and other identifying information throughout the corpus in order to preserve a certain amount of privacy. Table of Contents File No. File Name Age Minutes MLUm (based on all utterances) 1 T930930 1;5.20 40 1.514 2 T931007 1;5.27 40 1.591 3 T931014 1;6.4 30 1.288 4 T931021 1;6.11 40 1.440 5 T931029 1;6.19 40 1.788 6 T931103 1;6.24 40 1.924 7 T931111 1;7.1 40 1.477 8 T931118 1;7.8 40 1.635 9 T931125 1;7.15 40 1.820 10 T931223 1;8.13 40 1.691 11 T940107 1;8.28 40 2.105 12 T940113 1;9.3 40 2.329 13 T940120 1;9.10 40 2.331 14 T940127 1;9.17 40 2.180 15 T940204 1;9.25 40 2.223 16 T940210 1;10.0 40 2.235 17 T940217 1;10.7 40 2.313 18 T940224 1;10.14 40 2.233 19 T940303 1;10.20 40 2.348 20 T940311 1;11.1 40 2.467 21 T940324 1;11.14 40 2.739 22 T940330 1;11.20 40 2.529 23 T940407 1;11.28 40 3.306 24 T940414 2;0.4 40 2.519 25 T940421 2;0.11 40 2.471 26 T940428 2;0.18 40 2.689 27 T940505 2;0.25 40 2.929 28 T940512 2;1.2 40 3.042 29 T940519 2;1.9 40 3.004 30 T940526 2;1.16 40 3.248 31 T940602 2;1.23 40 3.737 32 T940609 2;1.30 40 3.368 33 T940616 2;2.6 40 3.485 34 T940623 2;2.13 40 3.178 35 T940630 2;2.20 40 3.016 36 T940707 2;2.27 40 3.609 37 T940714 2;3.4 40 3.413 38 T940721 2;3.11 40 2.831 39 T940728 2;3.18 40 3.288 40 T940804 2;3.25 40 2.998 41 T940813 2;4.3 40 3.102 42 T940825 2;4.15 40 2.934 43 T940831 2;4.21 40 3.158 44 T940909 2;4.30 40 3.425 45 T940916 2;5.6 40 2.916 46 T940922 2;5.12 40 3.325 47 T940929 2;5.19 40 3.564 48 T941006 2;5.26 40 3.134 49 T941013 2;6.3 40 3.486 50 T941020 2;6.10 40 3.688 51 T941028 2;6.18 40 4.036 52 T941103 2;6.24 40 3.182 53 T941110 2;7.0 40 3.252 54 T941117 2;7.7 40 3.563 55 T941123 2;7.13 40 3.516 56 T941201 2;7.21 40 4.006 57 T941208 2;7.28 40 3.932 58 T941215 2;8.5 40 4.486 59 T941222 2;8.11 40 4.040 60 T950112 2;9.2 40 4.175 61 T950119 2;9.9 40 4.779 62 T950127 2;9.17 40 3.806 63 T950202 2;9.23 40 3.133 64 T950209 2;9.30 40 4.261 65 T950216 2;10.6 40 3.286 66 T950223 2;10.13 40 4.085 67 T950302 2;10.20 40 3.663 68 T950310 2;11.0 40 4.059 69 T950324 2;11.14 40 5.003 70 T950330 2;11.20 40 5.672 71 T950413 3;0.3 40 4.227 72 T950504 3;0.24 40 5.058 73 T950511 3;1.1 40 4.923 74 T950518 3;1.8 40 4.133 75 T950608 3;1.29 40 3.787 Warnings a) Reliability was not checked. b) Comments and descriptions concerning child activities are not yet supplied. They will be added in a later version. Acknowledgments I gratefully acknowledge the support of this research by the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture through the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Priority Areas 10114104 entitled "Development of Mind", and through the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (Database) 184. I would like to thank Brian MacWhinney (Carnegie Mellon University) for his understanding technical support during the various phases of transcription, the members of the JCHAT Project for their encouraging supportment, and the numerous students who helped with the transcription, especially Yumiko Naganawa and Naomi Hamasaki. My special thanks go to Beverley Curran (Aichi Shukutoku University) for the emotional support and encouragement throughout this work. My warmest thanks though go to Tai and his mother. Without their understanding collaboration, this project would not have been possible. Literature MacWhinney, B. (2000). The CHILDES Project: Tools for Analyzing Talk. 3rd ed. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Assoc. Miyata, S. (1992). Wh-Questions of the Third Kind: The Strange Use of Wa-Questions in Japanese Children, Bulletin of Aichi Shukutoku Junior College No.31, p.151-155 Miyata, S. (1993). Japanische Kinderfragen: Zum Erwerb von Form - Inhalt - Funktion von Frageausdruecken, Hamburg: OAG. Miyata, S. (1995). The Aki Corpus. Longitudinal Speech Data of a Japanese Boy aged 1.6-2.12. Bulletin of Aichi Shukutoku Junior College No.34, 183-191 Miyata, S. (2000). Assigning MLU stages in Japanese. Journal of Educational Systems and Technologies. The Audio Visual Center, Chukyo University Nagoya Japan. Vol.9. Miyata, S. & N. Naka. (1998). Wakachigaki Gaidorain WAKACHI98 v.1.1. Educational Psychology Forum Report No. FR-98-003. The Japanese Association of Educational Psychology. Oshima-Takane, Y. & B. MacWhinney (eds.) (1995, 2nd ed. 1998). CHILDES Manual for Japanese. Montreal: McGill University / Nagoya: Chukyo University. Sugiura, M., N. Naka, S.Miyata & Y.Oshima. (1997). Nihongo Shutoku Kenkyu no tame no Joho Shisutemu CHILDES no Nihongoka. Gengo, 26, 3, 80-87. Terao, Y. (1995). Nihongo no tame no UNIBET. Oshima-Takane, Y. & B. MacWhinney (eds.) (1995). CHILDES Manual for Japanese. Montreal: McGill University. 97-100.