Repetitions in child production

[Bruno Estigarribia]

One correction. Excluding repetitions could underestimate MLU if
repetitions are long. This is likely in the case of echolalia, somewhat
less likely in the general case, presumably,  since the longer a fragment,
the less likely it is to be repeated exactly.
On Jun 6, 2014 9:39 AM, "Bruno Estigarribia" <brunilda at gmail.com> wrote:

> Well, the issue is whether you want to err on the side of overestimating
> MLU (by excluding repetitions) or underestimating it (by including them).
> Part of the problem is that not all repetitions have the same status, or
> the same origin. Treating immediate repetitions differently from
> non-immediate repetitions is somewhat arbitrary. Non-immediate and
> immediate repetitions can both be a sign of perseveration, for example.
> Then, how do you want to treat perseverative utterances? If perseveration
> is a hallmark of the child's language, then what does it mean to calculate
> MLU excluding repetitions? Are we calculating an upper bound on the MLU
> instead of the actual average? Is this MLU reflective of child's competence
> or just artificial?
> You either code your transcript in a way that differentiates repetitions
> that should not be counted (e.g. clarification repeats) from those that
> should be (e.g. perhaps perseveration) or... I don't know :-) Maybe one can
> calculate several MLUs with random exclusions of sentences and you can get
> a confidence interval for it. But this would be a poor substitute for
> making individual decisions about repeated utterances.
> Note finally that repetitions are treated completely differently in the
> calculation of type-token ratios. In that measure, keeping repeats is
> crucial. Perseverative or repetitous language brings TTRs down... are we
> equally concerned?
>
>
> On Fri, Jun 6, 2014 at 3:32 AM, Brian MacWhinney <macw at cmu.edu> wrote:
>
>> Dear Diane,
>>     As noted by Natasha Rakhlin, repetitions are typically excluded from
>> MLU.  This is done automatically and by default in the CLAN MLU program,
>> using the marking of repetitions with the <text> [/] and <text> [//]
>> symbols.  There is also a program called REPEAT that can add these marks if
>> they are not present, but it is safer to do this carefully when
>> transcribing.
>>
>> — Brian MacWhinney
>>
>>
>> On Jun 5, 2014, at 6:04 PM, Diane Lillo-Martin <
>> diane.lillomartin at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Dear all,
>> I would be very interested in knowing how you treat self-repetitions for
>> various types of analyses, especially MLU.
>>
>> In particular, I'm thinking of both single word and phrase repetitions,
>> such as a sequence of repeating the word 'ball' while playing with the
>> ball; or repetitions of phrases such as 'want cookie', either immediate or
>> with some intervening talk.
>>
>> I know that immediate repetitions are generally not counted according to
>> the criteria established by Brown. I believe that they would be included in
>> the CLAN calculation of MLU unless they are specifically tagged and the
>> command is set to exclude them.
>>
>> If you work with MLU or other measures for which it is relevant, how do
>> you treat such repetitions?
>>
>> Many thanks in advance,
>> Diane
>>
>> ----------
>> Diane Lillo-Martin
>> University of Connecticut
>>
>>
>> --
>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
>> "Info-CHILDES" group.
>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
>> email to info-childes+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com.
>> To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com.
>> To view this discussion on the web visit
>> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/info-childes/CAG5pRn%3DRhNa9w8o6hSjMm89NKGqOHe969x-5C9OfsDuR1YAevw%40mail.gmail.com
>> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/info-childes/CAG5pRn%3DRhNa9w8o6hSjMm89NKGqOHe969x-5C9OfsDuR1YAevw%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>
>> .
>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>>
>>
>>  --
>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
>> "Info-CHILDES" group.
>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
>> email to info-childes+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com.
>> To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com.
>> To view this discussion on the web visit
>> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/info-childes/FB66A613-71C6-4351-B668-D5E06DAE9DF0%40cmu.edu
>> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/info-childes/FB66A613-71C6-4351-B668-D5E06DAE9DF0%40cmu.edu?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>
>> .
>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>>
>
>

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to info-childes+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/info-childes/CAMWGojn2pTxdtvgcc0Y%3DuQDsNvWyYVCWh%2B6QRKWDXXzSCiuf7Q%40mail.gmail.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/info-childes/attachments/20140606/dbf2a3f8/attachment.htm>