comparing files in CHILDES

[Darinka Andjelkovic]

Dear Brian and colleagues,

thank you for your immediate and exaustive response. I took the CHILDES
Manual (sorry for skipping this chapter before) and it seems to me that RELY
would do what I need. I'll try.

And I think you missunderstood some parts of my letter. It was not my
intention to compare the differences in the transcripts itself (we made only
one transcript for one tape), but to detect not only the differences between
the codes line of two coders, but also to find the spots where a coder may
have made a change in a main line, haeder, or other dependent tiers. Those
changes are actualy important suggestions for corrections of the master
version of file, and I want them to be considered, and if good accepted. I
found in manual (I am working on1998 version and thinking on getting to new
ones) that +c switch will make program ingore the differences in the main
lines, haeders and depedents, and I guess I should only skipp the switch!

Second,
>   One part of your message that I do not understand is the claim that
> "making corrections before coding is not a solution to the problem".  But
> perhaps we could discuss this and related issues on
> info-chibolts at mail.talkbank.org instead of info-childes at mail.talkbank.org,
> since these questions may get into "nuts and bolts".
>
Of course we made proof reading of all files and entered all corrections
needed before the coding procedure! Actually, we haven't started coding yet,
we are just making trials and testing things. What I wanted to say is that
even after correcting transcripts, it will always happen that some solutions
in transcript become visible and changes necessery only in the coding
process.

I would like to hear whether other researchers share this experience with
me!!

Best wishes to all,

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


----- Original Message -----
From: "Brian MacWhinney" <macw at cmu.edu>
To: "Darinka Andjelkovic" <dandjelk at f.bg.ac.yu>;
<info-childes at mail.talkbank.org>
Sent: Friday, June 13, 2003 4:04 PM
Subject: Re: comparing files in CHILDES


> Dear Darinka,
>
>   First, for the comparison of coding lines, you can use the RELY program
in
> CLAN which is specifically designed to address this type of application.
> However, RELY assumes that the second coder used the same master file as
the
> first coder and it appears from your message that you do not yet know
about
> RELY and may not have used this procedure.  So, for future work, you
should
> try to follow the procedure required by RELY.
>   The application of RELY also assumes that you used Coder's Editor to
> create your codes, although this is not a formal requirement.  It is just
> that the codes created by Coder's Editor are guaranteed to have at least
the
> right characters and spacing and to only contain substantive disagreements
> between coders.
>  Second, it seems that you also want to spot all the differences in the
> transcription itself.  In theory, this could be done by using the DIFF
> program.  This is a standard Unix utility.  On Mac, you can get it through
> BBEdit.  On Windows, I think you could get it through the Epsilon editor.
I
> think that Word may also have a facility like this, although I am not
sure.
> In any case, when you run DIFF you will undoubtedly end up with an
enormous
> number of minor differences, many caused by minor things like spacing and
> such.  It is possible that some version of DIFF then takes you the next
step
> and tries to work with you to resolve transcription differences.  However,
> my experiences with DIFF suggest that, at this point, you would
essentially
> be in the position of going through the whole pair of transcripts by hand.
>   To make a long story short, it has seemed to me that the part of this
> process that it makes best sense to automate is the part that is done
> through Coder's Editor and RELY.  The part that would require the complete
> operation of DIFF is a much bigger and more difficult matter.  After you
> have worked with DIFF for a few days, you may have ideas about automation
> and then I would be happy to discuss how to work on this.  For example, my
> programmer has combined the use of DIFF with Perl scripts that negotiate
> uninteresting differences spotted by DIFF.  If you have someone who could
> write the necessary additional Perl scripts, we could explain this process
> to you.
>   One part of your message that I do not understand is the claim that
> "making corrections before coding is not a solution to the problem".  But
> perhaps we could discuss this and related issues on
> info-chibolts at mail.talkbank.org instead of info-childes at mail.talkbank.org,
> since these questions may get into "nuts and bolts".
>
> --Brian MacWhinney
>