Audio data

[Brian MacWhinney]

Dear Info-CHILDES,

  It appears that Kelley Sacco has now digitized all of the audio data for
English corpora that she and I have been able to obtain.  In a few cases,
the tapes are still out there, but in many cases they have been lost.  So, I
think it is now time for us to move on to the digitization of non-English
corpora, assuming that we have done the best we can with English.

   If you look at the corpora at http://childes.psy.cmu.edu/media/ you will
find that most of the corpora are linked to the audio.  However, the corpora
for Florianopolis and Gleason are not yet linked.  We also have about 8
other unlinked English corpora that we are not mounting on the web, but are
holding back until they are requested or until they are linked.  Please note
that it is also possible to specify that some audio corpora cannot be made
accessible over the web if there are problems with confidentiality.
However, currently no corpora have been restricted on these grounds.

  Susanne Miyata, Leonor Scliar-Cabral, Therese LeNormand, and Virginia Yip
and Steven Matthews, have contributed audio data for their transcripts from
Japanese, Portuguese, French (language disorders), and Cantonese.  However,
we have no audio yet for languages like Dutch, German, and Spanish, despite
the fact that we have many huge corpora.  So, I think it is now time to move
on to this next important step.  In the ideal world, some of you may have
already created digitized audio files from your audiotapes.  However, in the
real world, we (actually Kelley with my input) are willing to do this
digitization work at CMU.  We have taperecorders that can play all manner of
reel-to-reel, DAT, and cassette formats.  The only format I would like to
avoid for now is trying to extract audio from videotapes.

   Over the next months, I may begin to contact contributors individually.
However, it would be easier if you could think about this already and even
write to me before I contact you.

   The CHILDES grant can pay the costs of shipping the audiotapes.  It will
also often be necessary to make a copy, just to guard against the
possibility that the tapes would get lost in the mail, although this has
never yet happened.

  Many thanks.

--Brian MacWhinney