MLU in characters?

Tue Jul 29 17:24:12 UTC 2025

Couldn't WDLEN do something in this regard? It counts characters...

Nan Bernstein Ratner, F-, H-ASHA, F-AAAS, Board Certified Specialist in
Stuttering, Cluttering, and Fluency Disorders
she/her/hers
Distinguished University Professor
Hearing and Speech Sciences
University of Maryland
0100 Lefrak Hall, 7251 Preinkert Drive
College Park, MD 20742
nratner at umd.edu, 301-405-4217   My Zoom <https://umd.zoom.us/j/7924324343>
Co-director: FluencyBank (www.fluency.talkbank.org);
http://languagefluency.umd.edu/

Faculty, Language Science (languagescience.umd.edu; Neuroscience &
Cognitive Neuroscience (NACS, nacs.umd.edu), Developmental Science Field
Committee

https://hesp.umd.edu/facultyprofile/bernstein-ratner/nan

My PubMed bibliography:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/myncbi/1RORcBHUvuRQ82/bibliography/public/

On Tue, Jul 29, 2025 at 11:27 AM Shanley <allen at rhrk.uni-kl.de> wrote:

> The poor person’s workaround - you could tweak the system by just making
> each character into a word - i.e. by putting a space between every
> character on whatever tier you’re using to count MLU. Surely a python
> script could easily do this for you.
>
> Or a more complicated variant would be to write a python script to
> calculate what you want from the existing file.
>
> In both cases, you should of course take Leonid’s observation below into
> account - that you’d need to first decide which words/utterances should be
> included.
>
> Best,
> Shanley Allen.
>
>
>
> On 25. Jul 2025, at 15:15, 'Janet Bang' via chibolts <
> chibolts at googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
> Got it, thank you!
>
> On Fri, Jul 25, 2025 at 12:12 PM Leonid Spektor <spektor at andrew.cmu.edu>
> wrote:
>
>> Janet,
>>
>> I am sorry to say it, but MLU can only count words or morphemes.
>>
>> If you plan to use another program, then please keep in mind that MLU
>> uses a lot of rules to decide if utterance or word(s) should be counted.
>> You can read those rule in CLAN manual at
>> https://talkbank.org/0info/manuals/CLAN.pdf. Please look for chapter
>> "7.19" MLU in the manual.
>>
>>
>> Leonid.
>>
>> On Jul 25, 2025, at 14:53, 'Janet Bang' via chibolts <
>> chibolts at googlegroups.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hello!
>>
>> Is there a way to use the MLU program to extract MLU in characters? We
>> are exploring measures to facilitate cross-linguistic comparisons between
>> English and Spanish and someone had recommended using characters (over MLU
>> words) given the orthographic transparency of Spanish.
>>
>> We saw some other programs on github, but I was hoping there was
>> something within CLAN because we had already used MOR within CLAN.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Janet
>>
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>
> --
> Janet Y. Bang, Ph.D (she/her/hers)
> Assistant Professor
> Child and Adolescent Development
> Lurie College of Education, San José State University
> janet.bang at sjsu.edu | 408-924-3714
> https://www.sjsu.edu/education/faculty/janet-bang.php
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> ********************************************************************************
> Prof. Dr. Shanley E. M. Allen
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> Center for Cognitive Science
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