two new English corpora

[Brian MacWhinney]

Dear Info-CHILDES,
     I am happy to announce the addition to CHILDES of two new corpora  
from children learning American English.  The first is from Richard  
Weist at Fredonia.  Although the study focused on the use of time  
marking and autobiographical memory, the data are of general interest  
for their longitudinal coverage.  Audio is not yet available, but we  
hope to add it eventually.  A readme for this "Fredonia" corpus is  
given below.  The second corpus is from Melanie Soderstrom of the  
University of Manitoba.  This corpus focuses on two mothers of  
preverbal children and the transcripts are fully linked to audio.  The  
readme for the Soderstrom corpus also follows below.
Many thanks to both Melanie and Dick for these lovely additions to  
CHILDES.

--Brian MacWhinney

Fredonia Corpus:

The research was supported by grant # BCS-0091702 from the National  
Science Foundation, a SUNY Fredonia Scholarly Incentive Award, and  
funds provided by the Department of Psychology at SUNY Fredonia. The  
goal of this longitudinal project was to obtain caregiver-child  
interaction data from children aged 2 to 5, in order to capture the  
children’s language in an early phase of the acquisition of their  
event time (ET) system and continue observations through the emergence  
of their reference time (RT) system.  Whenever possible, the children  
were audio tape recorded in either a laboratory setting or in their  
homes twice a month for approximately 30 minutes.  The audiotapes were  
transcribed into the CHAT format, and then the transcriptions were  
completely checked for accuracy.  The children are as follows together  
with their starting ages, ending ages, and number (n) of transcripts:  
Ben (2;4 – 3;3, n=11), Emily (2;6 – 4;5 n = 23), Emma (2;7 – 4;7 n =  
28), Jillian (2;1 – 2;10 n = 22), Matty (2;3 – 5;0 n = 56), and Roman  
(2;2 – 4;7 n = 42).

Three forms of past reference were analyzed: 1) regular and irregular  
simple past tense, 2) past progressive, and 3) subordinate clause  
constructions with when and past time reference (i.e., past when- 
sentences).  Simple past was acquired relatively early at 2;4 (cf.  
Brown, 1973), past when-sentences relatively late at 3;6 (cf. Limber,  
1973), and past-progressive in the interim at 2;10.  The discourse  
segments surrounding the sentences that contained these forms were  
analyzed for the following three elements: 1) reference time context  
established, 2) a supporting event expressed in the segment, and 3)  
reference made to a self-relevant real-life event.  The likelihood  
that a discourse segment would include these three elements increased  
as past reference advanced from simple past to past progressive and  
then to past when-sentences.  As the morphosyntax of past reference  
became more complex, a higher proportion of past time references  
provided evidence for autobiographical memory.

Publications using these data should cite this article:

Weist, R., & Zevenbergen, A. (2008) Autobiographical Memory and Past  
Time Reference, Language Learning and Development, 4.

Soderstrom Corpus

This corpus was collected to examine the properties of speech input  
available to preverbal infants relevant to the acquisition of the  
grammar, and to evaluate the prosodic bootstrapping hypothesis for  
preverbal infants. The collection of this corpus was funded by a  
Kirschstein NRSA postdoctoral research fellowship 5F32HD042927 to MS  
and an NIH grant 1RO1HD32005 to JLM.

The participants were two mothers, each with young boy babies. The  
mothers and their babies were visited at (semi)-regular intervals from  
6-10 months (14 hours and 8.5 hours), along with two one-hour  
recordings each at 12 months. Transcripts or analyses of two follow-up  
recordings made of each mother at 18 months (with video), may be made  
available to individuals upon request to the above address. Additional  
information regarding the two families is available in the JCL  
citation below.

The mothers very kindly agreed to donate their recordings to CHILDES  
and to have the first names of the immediate family members available  
in CHILDES in order to facilitate analyses. Please treat this  
information with respect and help to preserve their anonymity  
otherwise. Last and middle names and some other possibly identifying  
information have been removed from the transcript and recordings.

Charles was born 24-FEB-2003 and his brother was born 29-AUG-1998.   
Joseph was born 19-DEC-2002.  His sister was born 17-MAR-2000 and his  
brother was born 07-APR-1998.

The audio recordings were collected by the mothers in the home.   
Recordings obtained within a short period of time are combined into  
the same transcript file.  Transcription uses basic CHAT format with  
no phonetic detail.  Please note that while care was taken in  
transcribing speech errors, noisy environments, and other difficult  
sections, the transcripts should not be considered error-free. Users  
should examine the transcripts and/or recordings carefully given their  
particular research needs. Additional information regarding the  
transcription process is available in the above JCL reference or by  
contacting Melanie Soderstrom at the above address. Please advise  
Melanie Soderstrom if you detect any obvious discrepancies between the  
recordings and the written form.

Publications using these data should cite:

Soderstrom, M., Blossom, M., Foygel, R., & Morgan, J.L. (in press).  
Acoustical cues and grammatical units in speech to two preverbal  
infants. Journal of Child Language.

  
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