comparing files in CHILDES

[Darinka Andjelkovic]

Dear colleagues,
I need assistance in organizing team work on a corpus of child langauge.

We have a file with child language transcribed in CHILDES, a coding team
working on several copies of the same file, and we need to achieve a high
level of accordance between coding of different people. In the process,
coders would find necessary to make corrections in file, and at the end we
would get different versions of the same file (different files) that
possibly differ not only in coding tiers but also in the main  lines and
other dependent tiers.

I need to know is there any ellegant way to make comparisons between the
outcome files that would enable us:
1. to detect all the differences between files (I hope for an automatic
tool)
2. to make final decision what solution of particular spot in transript we
agree on (this we have to do by ourselves),
3. to retrieve a critical part that we agreed on and paste it to the archive
(again hope for an automatic tool).

I want to emphasis that making corrections before coding is not solution of
the problem (btw. proof reading is already finished) because some features
of interaction and utterances become obvious only while working on coding.

Is this too difficult? I guess other people had similar problems. I would
appreciate any help.

Thanks in advance.

Darinka Andjelkovic
dandjelk at f.bg.ac.yu
Laboratory for Experimental Psyhology
Faculty of Philosophy
University of Belgrade
Serbia and Montenegro