standardization

[Brian MacWhinney]

Dear Sabine,

  Chapter 4 of the CHAT manual outlines a series of approaches that allow
transcribers to enter words in some sort of standardized form.  If words are
not entered at some level in standardized form, lexical retrieval and the
study of grammatical development can become difficult or impossible.  At the
same time, it is clear that children don't pop into the world speaking in
beautiful standardized forms.  So, CHAT provides the transcriber with a whole
set of mechanisms for "correcting" this tendency toward overstandardization.
One mechanism is the replacement structure, for example:

  gonna [: going to]

Another mechanism is the explicit listing of common non-standard forms.  I
did this work for English, but you would need to do this yourself for German.
For example, you may wish to list forms such as "hab" as standard.  However,
for many forms of this type, there is a better third solution.  This is the
use of parenthesis.  For example you could have "hab(e)" instead of "hab"

A fourth solution is to construct a complete %pho tier.

A fifth solution is to use sonic CHAT and to link your transcripts to the
actual sound.

There are some additional minor solutions.  These solutions can and should be
combined as needed.

--Brian

P.S.  You may wish to post notes of this type to
info-chibolts at childes.psy.cmu.edu instead of info-childes at childes.psy.cmu.edu
Thanks.