CHILDES renewal support letter

Thu Feb 7 11:16:22 UTC 2008

Dear Brian,
As a frequent user of CHILDES I would like to express my gratitude for founding, maintaining, adjusting and expanding the CHILDES-database and the CLAN analysis tool.
I have been working with the CHILDES-system for nearly eight years now. First when I was writing my MA-thesis, for which I used data from the Groningen-corpus. As a student-assistent I have expanded my knowledge of Childes and for my PhD-thesis, I use CHILDES again. My project focuses on the interaction between morphosyntax and pragmatics in the acquisition of reference from a cross-linguistic perspective (Dutch, English and French). It would have been impossible to carry out this research without CHILDES.  Collecting, transcribing, coding and analyzing longitudinal data in three languages for three children each within a period of four years is impossible. That is why I am very glad with CHILDEs from which all data were taken. Furthermore, I used the CLAN analysis tool for coding and analyzing my data. I also use MOR automatic coding to get a fuller picture of the morphosyntactic forms that children use.
I think that it is very important that the CHILDES-project is continued. The database must be expanded by new corpora, also from languages that are not well represented yet, for example the Skandinavian languages. The integration of dense databases into CHILDES is also crucial, given the new trends in language acquisition research. 
Below, I give an overview of my publications and presentations for which I used CHILDES. 

Publications
To appear Rozendaal, M.I. & Baker, A.E.  A cross-linguistic investigation of the acquisition of the pragmatics of indefininte and definite reference in two-year-olds. To appear in Journal of Child Language. 

2007

Rozendaal, M.I. The acquisition of the morphosyntax-pragmatics interface in French L1: Evidence from reference with articles and pronouns. In S. Baauw, J. van Kampen & M. Pinto (eds.), The Acquisition of Romance Languages. Selected Papers from The Romance Turn II. LOT: Utrecht, pp 145-164. 

2006

Rozendaal, M.I. & Baker, A.E. Oeh dat is een koekje! De verwerving van de referentiële functies van lidwoorden en pronomina door Nederlandstaligekinderen. Toegepaste Taalwetenschap in Artikelen, 75 (1), pp 29-39.

2001

Rozendaal, M.I. 'De verwerving van de verleden tijd door Nederlandstaligekinderen: de invloed van het taalaanbod en semantische predisposities', Unpublished MA-thesis, University of Amsterdam. 

Presentations

2007

"Children's sensitivity to listener's knowledge: the use of morphosyntactic forms for referent introductions", The First Conference of the Swedish Association for Language and Cognition, Lunds Universitet, November 30. 
"Determiner omission in child language: a pragmatic explanation?", Child Language Seminar, University of Reading, July 20. 
"The acquisition of the morphosyntax andpragmatics of reference: Evidence from the use of indefinite/definite determiners and pronouns in English", Contribution to Panel about Reference, IPrA, Göteborg, July 12.

2006

"The acquisition of the syntax-pragmatics interface in French L1: evidence from DP's and pronouns", The Romance TurnII, Utrecht University, September 7. 
"A cross-linguistic investigation of referent introductions in young children's spontaneous speech", Child Language Seminar, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, July 20. 
"Linguistic and non-linguistic influences on the acquisition of referent introductions: a cross-linguistic perspective", Invited talk for Experimental Linguistic Talks Utrecht, Utrecht University, June 30. 
"Pragmatic functions of nouns and pronouns in two-year-olds: a cross-linguistic perspective", Juniorenoverleg ACLC,University of Amsterdam, March 7. 
"'Oeh, dat is een koekje!' De verwerving van pragmatische functies van lidwoorden en pronomina door Nederlandstalige kinderen", ANéLA-juniorendag, Utrecht University, February 8.

2005

'Morphosyntactic influences on the acquisition of reference in the nominal domain', TIN-dag, AVT, 29 January. 
'Cognitive and morpho-syntactic influences on the acquisition of reference', poster at the X. International Congress for the Study of Child Language, Freie Universität Berlin, July 25-29. 
'The acquisition of reference in two-year-olds', Emergence of Linguistic Abilities, Lyon, December 8-10.

2004

'The development of the syntax andpragmatics of reference: a cross-linguistic perspective', poster at the Child Language Seminar, University of the West of England, Bristol,12 July. 
'The acquisition of the syntax and pragmatics of reference: A cross-linguistic perspective', NAP-dag, ACLC, University of Amsterdam, 17 September.   
'The syntax and pragmatics of reference in first languageacquisition, Juniorenoverleg ACLC, University of Amsterdam, 16 March.

2003

'The syntax and pragmatics of reference in firstlanguage acquisition, NAP-dag, ACLC, University of Amsterdam, 12 September.

2002

Rozendaal, M.I. & Baker, A.E. 'De verwerving van de verleden tijd door Nederlandstaligekinderen: de invloed van het taalaanbod en semantische predisposities', NETWERK, Nijmegen, februari 2002.

-----Original Message-----
From: info-childes at googlegroups.com [mailto:info-childes at googlegroups.com]On Behalf Of Brian MacWhinney
Sent: maandag 4 februari 2008 18:38
To: info-childes at googlegroups.com
Subject: CHILDES renewal support letter

Dear Child Language Colleague,

This letter is addressed to researchers who have made use of the data and programs of the Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES). The grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that has supported the CHILDES Project for the last five years will end in 12 months, and the Competing Continuation renewal application is due March 1. The new proposal will focus on:

·      continued expansion of the database,

·      web-distributed screen-shot-video user tutorials,

·      creation of a new, user-friendly interface for CLAN,

·      more powerful search programs that operate with the new interface,

·      fully automatic computation of IPSyn and DSS,

·      extension of automatic morphosyntactic analysis to more languages,

·      fuller support for coding of sign language with links to ELAN,

·      fuller support for Conversation Analysis (CA) coding,

·      computer-assisted methods for very rapid first-pass transcription, 

·      extended support for video-based transcription,

·      extended interoperability with other major computer programs, and

·      a first generation system for collaborative commentary (blogging) on transcripts over the web.

To support this proposal, I need to ask all users to send me a letter (email to macw at cmu.edu is fine) detailing their use of CHILDES over the last six years.   The success of the three previous proposals for funding of CHILDES was due in large measure to the letters you provided. In your letter, please include citations for articles, conference presentations, talks, teaching activities, or student papers based on the use of CHILDES programs or data. I will then include these citations in the CHILDES-BIB that is on the web, as well as in the proposal.   Also, please mention any new features that you would like to see included in the programs and the database. If several people work together in a team or workgroup, it would be fine if I could receive separate letters from each person.  If it is more convenient for you to write in a language other than English, that is fine too, perhaps with just an introductory sentence in English.

I need to receive these letters by March 1 at the latest. However, it would make it much easier on me, if I could receive your letter in the next week or two.  You can just email your letter to  macw at cmu.edu.  I will acknowledge each email, as I receive it.

I think you all understand how vital your letter is at this time.  Let me thank you in advance for your continuing support for this important component of the scientific infrastructure for the study of child language development.

Best regards,

Brian MacWhinney, Professor of Psychology, CMU

macw at cmu.edu

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