CDI construction - what to put in

[Leslie Nabors]

Hi Katie,

Since I am just now completing the Hungarian adaptation of the CDI (toddler form), I believe I can
speak to the first part of your question. Hungarian is a morphologically rich language, so, as you
said, looking at an English-language CDI will get you only so far...

I began with the original MacArthur CDI, however, noting that not all of the English closed-class
words are there either (e.g., "whom", "ourselves"). I then looked at natural language samples
(mostly MacWhinney's) to see what kids in that range might be saying. Hungarian is also lucky to
have a really well-structured and detailed diary study from the 19th century, and I looked at that
too. I then took my draft copy and met with focus groups of parents, a school psychologist, and
nursery school teachers (in Hungary) before I made the final version.

I don't know how much this helps, but I believe it worked well for my project. I'm now beginning
work on the infant form with a group of Hungarian researchers, and we will definitely conduct the
focus groups again -- they were incredibly helpful.

Best of luck,

Leslie Nabors Olah



On Tue, 6 Apr 2004 08:25:37 +0100
  "Alcock, Katherine" <k.j.alcock at lancaster.ac.uk> wrote:
>We're constructing a CDI in two East African languages which both have a lot of grammatical
>words.  For example, I have just counted up the possessives and there are about 60 in one of the
>languages and more in the other.
>
>In English it seems as if all pronouns etc. are put in to the toddler scale - what about in more
>grammar-rich languages? Would it be sensible to pilot all the words and then leave in some that
>distinguish well? Or to ask parents about some of the words and to give examples of the others
>their children can say? We are administering the inventory as an interview as our parents are
>illiterate so the parents are a captive audience - they can't go off to pick the kids up in the
>middle of doing the questionnaire, and then forget about filling it in - but it takes longer.
>
>Secondly, and I have a feeling this was discussed recently, what exactly constitutes a word?
>Common phrases are included in the English version, and it seems to me they are often
>combinations of other pairs of words.  Presumably we are assuming that children have not analysed
>the phrases into their separate words - is there evidence that children use the phrases (e.g.
>peanut butter) without their consituent words (peanut, butter) and hence it adds information to
>include the phrases?  There seem to be fewer phrases in the short forms of the questionnaire, and
>I'm not sure if this is deliberate.
>
>thanks
>
>Katie Alcock
>