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Hi Katie,<br><br>
The process outlined by Leslie below is the one that Donna
Jackson-Maldonado used for the Mexican Spanish version. It is also the
strategy that was used by Liz Bates and her students in constructing the
original CDI. My guess is that most of the adaptations to other languages
used similar strategies in order to develop a final product that is valid
for the particular language. Validation from language samples, if
possible, is certainly the best strategy I can think of.<br><br>
Best regards,<br><br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>Donna<br><br>
At 12:56 PM 4/6/2004, Leslie Nabors wrote:<br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite>Hi Katie,<br><br>
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...<br><br>
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.
<br>
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.<br><br>
Best of luck,<br><br>
Leslie Nabors Olah<br><br>
<br><br>
On Tue, 6 Apr 2004 08:25:37 +0100<br>
"Alcock, Katherine" <k.j.alcock@lancaster.ac.uk>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite>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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
thanks<br><br>
Katie Alcock<br>
</blockquote><br>
</blockquote>
<x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
<font face="Monotype Corsiva, Zapf Chancery" size=6 color="#000080"><b>Donna
Thal<br>
</font><font face="Comic Sans MS" size=2 color="#000080">Donna J. Thal,
Ph.D.<br>
Developmental Psycholinguistics Laboratory<br>
6330 Alvarado Court, Suite 231<br>
San Diego, CA 92120-1850<br><br>
phone: 619-594-7110<br>
fax: 619-594-4570<br><br>
San Diego State University<br>
Department of Communicative Disorders and<br>
SDSU/UCSD Joint Doctoral Program in Language and Communicative
Disorders<br>
<a href="http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/dept/chhs/cd/Dpl/DPL/index.htm" eudora="autourl">http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/dept/chhs/cd/Dpl/DPL/index.htm<br><br>
</a>Research Psychologist<br>
Center for Research on Language<br>
University of California, San Diego <br>
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