a few new codes

[Brian MacWhinney]

Dear Info-ChiBolts,
  In the process of reformatting all of CHILDES for XML, we found some
things in CHAT we have needed to fix.  My policy with CHAT has been to
change it as little as possible and to wait for a single time to make
any big changes.  Well, after 14 years of few changes, that time finally
came.  I will soon write a paper on aspects of the process and I have
been updating the online version of the manual to reflect these changes,
but let me call your attention to the biggest changes:

1.  CHECK has been severely tightened.  If you run it on old files (not
those on the web, but those you might have in your personal files) you
will see the changes.  It is much more demanding now, which is a good
thing in the long run, but often frustrating in the short run.

2.  We restricted the types of comments that can appear on the main line
to those that most people really use.  I don't think most people will
notice this change.

3.  We added two codes for events with no scopes.  The first is a simple
punctate code.  Instead of having [% laughs], you now have &=laugh.  The
reason why [% laughs] was bad was that it implied a scope, but in fact the
laughing occurs at a time and has no scope.  There is a full list of
recommended forms like &=laugh that I will soon put in the manual.

4.  The second non-scope event code form is [^ text]  This is for more
open ended comments, which still have no scope.

5.  The syntax for a mark of multiple repetitions has been changed from
(*4) for four repetitions of something to [x 4]. This is a scoped comment.

6.  As I mentioned in the last message, error codes can now have a word
after the asterisk that gives the target.

7.  Finally, there are some other minor tweaks, such as the addition of @k
for Japanese kana and special fields for Asian languages.

All of this will be in the manual soon.

--Brian MacW