<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<META NAME="Generator" CONTENT="MS Exchange Server version 6.5.7226.0">
<TITLE>Re: video clips of child language research</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<DIV id=idOWAReplyText78769 dir=ltr>
<DIV dir=ltr><FONT face=Arial color=#000000 size=2>Proposal to develop a GEMS
folder on CHILDES</FONT></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr><FONT face=Arial color=#000000 size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr><FONT face=Arial color=#000000 size=2>Many of us in the child
language community are parents, but we don't have the time or organization to
collect large language samples from our kids. However, probably most of us
have kept a notebook handy to record interesting things that our kids say.
Sometimes they just never get used because it's not really enough to publish and
might end up being only an anecdote in our classes. It seems to me that
this is a rich source of unsystematic but theoretically relevant data.
It's the kind of data that will only show up fortuitously in the more systematic
data collections but because we as child language researchers are trained
to know when something is remarkable, we can identify such utterances easily and
jot them down. Think of all of the rich examples that have become
available, for example, from Melissa Bowerman with these kinds of
data.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr><FONT face=Arial size=2>I would suggest that we develop a format
for distributing these gems -- perhaps the same basic CHAT format in little mini
files-- and have a folder in which these can be reside on CHILDES.
Perhaps we could include key words that would help to identify the kind of error
that the child made. This would not substitute for true quantitative data,
but it might be useful for answering questions, for example, about
whether or not kids ever make errors of certain types. Such errors may
never show up in the systematic speech samples but nevertheless could be
found within the broader language output of the child. Perhaps we
could start off by seeing how many of us have these scrappy notebooks lying
around waiting to be mined. Perhaps if there were a public place to
deposit such data, this might encourage people to do this more.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr><FONT face=Arial size=2>Peter Gordon</FONT></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr><FONT face=Arial color=#000000 size=2></FONT> </DIV></DIV>
<DIV id=idSignature9316 dir=ltr>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#000000 size=2>Peter Gordon, Associate
Professor</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>525 W 120th St. Box 180</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Biobehavioral Sciences Department</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Teachers College, Columbia University</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>New York, NY 10027</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>(212) 678-8162</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr><BR><FONT size=2><BR></FONT> </DIV>
</BODY>
</HTML>