linkage symbol and compound marker

[Brian MacWhinney]

Dear Yuriko,
   The plus is used to mark the pieces of real compounds that are created by productive compounding
processes.  The underscore is used for combinations of words or word pieces.  The form Baby_Allison
is correct, because this is not a compound.  Of course, you could also have Baby Allison with spaces,
but having Baby_Allison reflects the unitary nature of the combination.  
   In terms of MLU, I would not take any analysis that uses the main line instead of the %mor line seriously.
However, your question is still valid in either case.  For both the main and the %mor line, compounds are
treated as multi-morphemic.  I think that decision is clearly correct.  However, words with the underline are
treated as monomorphemic.  This could be questioned.  The problem is that words with the underline
form a real grab bag of different structures and it is not clear how to treat them all.  If you wish, you could 
change the delimiter set for MLU to include the underscore and then they would be treated as 
multimorphemic.  Or you could decide to transcribed as "Baby Allison"  or even "baby Allison".

-- Brian

On Feb 6, 2012, at 7:55 PM, Yuriko Oshima-Takane wrote:

> Dear Brian,
>  
> Could you please let me know how the linkage symbol “ _”  is different from
> the compound marker “+”?  I am presently teaching  the CHAT transcription and CLAN
> programs in my course and have tried to run MLU (on main tier) and MAXWD on the
> same transcripts with the linkage symbol (Baby_Allison) or with the compound marker
> (Baby+Allison) to understand the difference between the two symbols.
> Baby_Allison/Baby+Allison occurs 6 times in the test transcripts (please see attached).
> I got slightly different MLUs as well as MAXWD output (see below). For the MAXWD, the linkage
> symbol“_” is counted as one letter. What about MLU counts? I thought both cases are
> counted as one morpheme word but apparently not. Please let me know why.
> Thanks.
>  
> Baby_Allison
> > MLU +t*CHI -t%mor    @
> mlu +t*CHI -t%mor @
> Mon Feb 06 19:24:38 2012
> mlu (03-Jan-2012) is conducting analyses on:
>   ONLY speaker main tiers matching: *CHI;
> ****************************************
> From file <c:\CHILDES\psyc561\data\lab12012\Alisson22testmlu#3.cha>
> MLU for Speaker: *CHI
>   MLU (xxx, yyy and www are EXCLUDED from the utterance and morpheme counts):
>                 Number of: utterances = 22, words = 40
>                 Ratio of words over utterances = 1.818
>                 Standard deviation = 0.936
>  
> Baby+Allison
> > MLU +t*CHI -t%mor     @
> mlu +t*CHI -t%mor @
> Mon Feb 06 19:25:10 2012
> mlu (03-Jan-2012) is conducting analyses on:
>   ONLY speaker main tiers matching: *CHI;
> ****************************************
> From file <c:\CHILDES\PSYC561\DATA\LAB12012\Alisson22testmlu#4.cha>
> MLU for Speaker: *CHI
>   MLU (xxx, yyy and www are EXCLUDED from the utterance and morpheme counts):
>                 Number of: utterances = 22, words = 43
>                 Ratio of words over utterances = 1.955
>                 Standard deviation = 0.976
>  
>  
> > maxwd  +t*mot      @
> maxwd +t*mot @
> Mon Feb 06 19:41:29 2012
> maxwd (03-Jan-2012) is conducting analyses on:
>   ONLY speaker main tiers matching: *MOT;
> ****************************************
> From file <c:\CHILDES\PSYC561\DATA\LAB12012\Alisson22testmlu#3.cha>
> *** File "c:\CHILDES\PSYC561\DATA\LAB12012\Alisson22testmlu#3.cha": line 13: 12 characters long:
> baby_allison
> *** File "c:\CHILDES\PSYC561\DATA\LAB12012\Alisson22testmlu#3.cha": line 24: 12 characters long:
> baby_allison
> *** File "c:\CHILDES\PSYC561\DATA\LAB12012\Alisson22testmlu#3.cha": line 41: 12 characters long:
> baby_allison
>  
> Mon Feb 06 19:40:22 2012
> maxwd (03-Jan-2012) is conducting analyses on:
>   ONLY speaker main tiers matching: *MOT;
> ****************************************
> From file <c:\CHILDES\PSYC561\DATA\LAB12012\Alisson22testmlu#4.cha>
> *** File "c:\CHILDES\PSYC561\DATA\LAB12012\Alisson22testmlu#4.cha": line 13: 11 characters long:
> baby+allison
> *** File "c:\CHILDES\PSYC561\DATA\LAB12012\Alisson22testmlu#4.cha": line 24: 11 characters long:
> baby+allison
> *** File "c:\CHILDES\PSYC561\DATA\LAB12012\Alisson22testmlu#4.cha": line 41: 11 characters long:
> baby+allison
>  
> Yuriko
> 
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> <Alisson22testmlu#3.cha><Alisson22testmlu#4.cha>

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