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Thanks to those who replied on this. I will investigate your
suggestions and reply to you individually later. I am always
impressed by how helpful the people on this list are: seems to me
that CHILDES is not just a fantastic resource but, even more
importantly, a fantastic community as well.<br>
<br>
BTW I just wanted to apologise for my comment (written in some
haste) that I wanted something "a bit more accessible" than CHILDES.
I did not mean to imply that CHILDES is inaccessible! Far from it: I
found it very easy to use during my PhD research, and indeed to
strip out the linguistic codes, even without the benefit of Brian's
excellent advice below, which will make this process still easier in
future. (I was analysing the Wells corpus to look for instances of
young children talking about third parties, so was only interested
in the quite deep semantic content of what they were talking about.
Just in case anyone is interested, this study has not been
published, but my PhD thesis is online and I can point you to the
relevant chapter.) <br>
<br>
I suppose my reason for making the "accessible" comment was simply
that my colleagues on this project have never used CHILDES
themselves, nor are they ever likely to, being game design academics
with no developmental or linguistic training. I am very tied up with
teaching etc at the moment and was wistfully thinking of a web page
full of suitable stories that I could just point them to and let
them read away at. But thanks again for the suggestions, they look
very useful.<br>
<br>
Best regards,<br>
Gordon<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 24/03/2014 17:58, Brian MacWhinney
wrote:<br>
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Dear Gordon,
<div><br>
<div> CHILDES really should include more narrative corpora.
The emphasis on spoken language made sense at one point, but
it should not have precluded efforts to include narrative
corpora. Currently, we have Frog Story data and a few other
things. But there are certainly dozens of other corpora out
there. It would be particularly interesting to have
narratives that are collected using parallel methods across
groups, as well as methods for systematic coding, including
automatic coding. In fact, I was even thinking of organizing
something like a CHILDES workshop to tackle this issue. </div>
<div> In terms of the issue of stripping out linguistic
annotation, this is easy to do automatically using two
methods. The first method is to remove any coding tiers with
the TRIM program in CLAN and the second is to create a %flo
line that removes any main line codes using the FLO program. </div>
<div> In practice, the codes that people add to children’s
written narratives are of a very different sort, often
focusing on misspellings or corrections of grammatical errors
and such. I agree that it would be nice to have methods of
removing such embelllishments for certain purposes and leaving
them for others. Creating these methods is not difficult once
we establish some standards for narrative corpus encoding.</div>
<div> In general, we really need to do more regarding
narratives in CHILDES and we would very much welcome
contributions, suggestions, and ideas.</div>
<div> In regard to data from children with autism, one would
think that IRBs would not object to contributing anonymized
narratives. So, it may make sense to contact the many groups
who have been collecting data of this type to see if they can
be made public in some way.</div>
<div> The essays on the <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://artandwriting.org">artandwriting.org</a> site
are certainly great, but I think we would need broader samples
to understand the full course of the development of narrative
abilities across all segments of the population. </div>
<div> </div>
<div>So, the things that would help in this area are:</div>
<div>1. Contributions of narrative corpora.</div>
<div>2. Pointers to methods for systematic analysis.</div>
<div>3. Ideas for how to prioritize efforts in this area.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Any input on these matters would be much appreciated.
People who find this interesting can post to the list and/or
send me information directly.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Best regards,</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>—Brian MacWhinney</div>
<div><br>
<div>
<div>On Mar 24, 2014, at 10:31 AM, Gordon Ingram <<a
moz-do-not-send="true" href="mailto:gordoning@gmail.com">gordoning@gmail.com</a>>
wrote:</div>
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<div text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"> Hi everyone,<br>
<br>
Some colleagues and I are hoping to start a project in
the nearish future which will involve the collection of
children's original (fictional) narratives as part of
the requirements-gathering process for a piece of
software aimed at helping children improve their
creative writing skills. I plan to share any resulting
corpus with the scientific community.<br>
<br>
Does anyone know of a collection of original fictional
narratives - i.e., not 'retold' fairytales and the like
- which is easily available on the internet, for us to
do a pilot study on? I am vaguely aware of Ruth Berman
and Dan Slobin's 'frog stories', some of which I think
are available in CHILDES, and will have a look at them;
but ideally I would like something a bit more accessible
(i.e. without all the linguistic annotation, as we will
probably need to strip that out in order to have it
analysed by AI) - and perhaps something written by kids
rather than spoken.<br>
<br>
Age range would be about 6-12 - though we could go older
if necessary. Something on autistic children's
production of fictional narratives would also be really
useful; doesn't have to be a corpus in this case, even
an article or two would help.<br>
<br>
Best regards,<br>
Gordon<br>
-- <br>
<strong>Dr Gordon Ingram<br>
Lecturer in Psychology<br>
School of Society, Enterprise & Environment<br>
Bath Spa University</strong><br>
T: +44 (0)1225 875714 M: 07973 136820<br>
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<br>
<br>
<br>
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