Bibliography on Child Language Work in Singapore

[Brian MacWhinney]

Dear Info-CHILDES,
    I am happy to announce the addition to the CHILDES/BIB of a  
collection of 331 references to child language research that focuses  
on language learning in Singapore.  This collection was contributed  
by Madalena Cruz-Ferreira and colleagues.  To locate these references  
within the larger database, just look for records in which the  
Keywords field says "Singapore".  I have also integrated into the  
larger database the 1040 records on Spanish contributed by Rebeca  
Barriga-Villanueva and colleagues and the 1153 records contributed by  
Madalena Cruz-Ferreira and colleagues.  Similarly, these can be  
located by searching for "Spanish" or "Portuguese" in the Keywords  
field.  All of these materials and the relevant documentation can be  
downloaded from http://childes.psy.cmu.edu/bibs/

--Brian MacWhinney

    Here is the documentation file from Madalena Cruz-Ferreira  
explaining the recently contributed Singapore Bibliography:

The following is an update on a bibliography of research in Singapore  
child language. This bibliography spans the past two decades up to  
ongoing studies on monolingual or multilingual English, Mandarin,  
Malay and Tamil as used in Singapore, by and to typically and  
atypically developing children, at home or elsewhere, written in  
English, and includes research on educational and pedagogical issues,  
as well as on developmental norming and remediation.

The present scope of the bibliography stems from several limitations.  
Self-imposed limitations concern, for example, the omission of  
references, whether published or academic research pieces, whose  
titles I found vague and whose abstracts are unavailable to resolve  
this vagueness, and the inclusion of studies dealing with the  
language used to the child, on my assumption that analyses of child  
language can only make sense with clear information about linguistic  
targets surrounding the child. One more inherent limitation concerns  
my illiteracy in three of the four languages used in Singapore, which  
explains the absence of references written in Chinese, Malay and Tamil.

The long-term goal of this bibliographical database is to provide a  
regularly updated source of information on child language research in  
the broader South-East Asian region, preferably in different  
languages. It is my hope that researchers in child language, in  
Singapore as elsewhere in the SE Asian region, will want to come back  
to me with information and suggestions that may turn this  
bibliography into a research tool that can truly serve its users.

Putting together a usable bibliography is not a one-person  
assignment. The following colleagues (this includes current and past  
students) generously contributed contacts and details on their own  
research, as well as their time: Norhaida Aman, Chris Brebner, Chen  
Ee San, Joseph A. Foley, Anthea Fraser Gupta, Low Ee Ling, Ng Bee  
Chin, Tomasina Oh, Susan J. Rickard Liow, Hazel See Lei Chia, Seetha  
Lakshmi, Rita E. Silver, Tan Liang Hui, Tan Seok Hui and Linda  
Thompson. Thank you for making this undertaking possible.