bedtime monologues

[Brian MacWhinney]

Dear Info-CHILDES,

I am happy to announce the addition to the CHILDES database of a remarkable
corpus of bedtime monologues collected by Katherine Nelson and colleagues
and analysed in

Nelson, K. (Ed.) (1989). Narratives from the crib. Cambridge MA: Harvard
University Press.

The file nelson.zip is now on the server.  Here is the basic information on
this corpus:

This data set was collected over a 15 month period (November 1981 to
February 1983) when the child Emily was 21 to 36 months old, by the child's
parents, who recorded their conversations and the child's spontaneous
speech while alone after they left her room at night or at naptime, under
the direction of Katherine Nelson.  Recording was done by casette recorder
placed under her crib. T perecordings were made more frequently in the
first few months  Tapes were reviewed and commented upon by the child's
mother, and were initially transcribed by both the mother and the
researcher.  Later tapes were reviewed by different researchers studying
them over a two-year period.  The final transcription made available to
CHILDES has revised some of the original versions for consistency and
accuracy. The data have been reported in a number of previous publications,
and the study is documented more fully in Nelson (1989).  There may be
minor discrepancies in the version delivered to CHILDES compared to
published excerpts.  Such discrepancies are to be expected given the
difficulties of interpreting speech of a child talking to herself at this
age. The tapes contain many references to individuals in addition to
parents and child, including baby-sitter (Tanta), grandmother (Mormor),
baby brother (Stephen), and friend Carl.  The names of other friends and
relations have been changed for confidentiality, and are not necessarily
consistent with the names used in previous publications (which were also
substitutes).  Last names have been consistently deleted, although in some
cases this interrupts the rhythmic quality of the talk.

Questions regarding this data set should be directed to Katherine Nelson,
Developmental Psychology, City University of New York Graduate Center, 33
West 42nd St., New York, NY 10036 (email: knelson at email.gc.cuny.edu).

Permission to use the data for research must be obtained before publication
is contemplated.  Publications using this data set should cite:

Nelson, K. (Ed.) (1989). Narratives from the crib. Cambridge MA: Harvard
University Press.