new corpus

[Brian MacWhinney]

Dear Info-CHILDES,
  I am happy to announce the addition to CHILDES of a new corpus for
English language acquisition.  This is a set of data collected by Andrea
Feldman of the University of Colorado from her son Steven.  Many thanks to
Andrea for contributing this corpus.
Here is the documentation for the study.  The data are in feldman.sit and
feldman.zip on childes.psy.cmu.edu.

--Brian MacWhinney


The data in this study come from a longitudinal study of my first
child, code-named Steven, from age 0;5 to 2;9.  I began video and
audio-taping
Steven once a month from 0;5 to 1;2, after which I taped him approximately
three
hours per week.  Phonetic transcriptions of Steven's speech are included
only on words which differ noticeably from the adult standard; all other
words are written on the main tier in standard English.
	
Steven was tested cognitively at two and three years old by his
pediatrician.  On the Verbal Language Development Exam he scored 3.88
(approximate developmental age) at two years old and 5.74 at three years
old.  On the Denver Articulation Screening Exam, he scored in the 98th
percentile at age three; for purposes of comparison with other children,
one  would classify him as a rapid language learner.

Method

To collect the data, I used a Sony FE camcorder along with a Marantz tape
recorder and a Tecnica remote microphone. A heavy duty Bogen 3211 tripod
was  also used at times.  Steven was always taped in our own home, with one
or  both parents present.  Usually, one parent operated the video camera
while  the other interacted with the child.  'Laura', Steven's younger
sister, was  born when he was 1;11.13; she is present and sometimes making
sounds (but  not yet speaking) on some of these tapes.

I selectively transcribed Steven's data in CHAT format.  Specifically, I
transcribed ten one-hour tapes between the ages of 1;2.1 and 1;4.16, and
fourteen between the ages of 1;11 and 2;3.26.

Participants:  Steven (STV), Laura (LAR), Father (FAT), Mother (MOT).

Steven's Lexicon (note: parents were relaxed about using some of
STV's child forms to him, and sometimes with each other)

[bababa] 'food'  4/8/93 age  0;8.21 - 1;0.10
'kissing sound' voiceless  [b] 'food' 4/8/93
[ma] 'mama' 4/23/93
[mama] 'milk' 4/26/93
[mUm] 'mama' 5/22/93
[dada] 'dad' 5/22/93
[ha] 'hi' 5/17/93
[baba] 'bye' 5/18/93
[gobaba] 'goin' bye bye' 6/8/93
[boida] [goida] 'good night' 6/9/93
[nana] 'no' 6/13/93
[nana] 'banana' 7/1/93
[mae] 'good' 7/3/93
[*b] 'splashy' 7/26/93
[kaka] 'quack quack' (name for duck) 7/28/93
[Uk] 'yucky' 7/28/93
@c
a		other
adiadi		slide
adior		from Spanish, adios
aish, ai, aiX	orange
ba		red
badada		body lotion
bae or baek	black
bagi		bagel, bread
bibi		slipper
Bikiki		King Soopers
bu		blue
budleyley	doll
byebye		byebye or telephone
byebye bathie	bath
byegoodbye	telephone
dada		daddy
didi		train, deer
Ebi Fine Park	Eben Fine Park
gi		green
giya		crayons
higher higher	building blocks
kaboomps	fall down, from kaboom
kaka		car
mama		milk, mother
magigaga	milk and cookies
mangimangi	fire engine
Mimi		Sabrina, or Brina, the family cat
ming		swing
Minimart	Toys R Us
Nada		Lamb Chop
nadi		lambie
nola		granola
nula		vanilla
opa		open
Tadi		STV (name for himself)
Tadu		Thomas the Tank Engine
tuba		table
Yaya		Lara (name for baby sister)

SES: At the time of taping, MOT was a linguistics doctoral student at the
University of Colorado; FAT held the Ph.D. in Comparative Literature
and was a senior instructor in Writing at the University of
Colorado.

References: Feldman 1998, Menn & Feldman (to appear 2001 in
the Journal of Child Language),  Feldman (in press), and other work
in progress.

Contact information:
Andrea Feldman, Instructor
University Writing Program
Campus Box 359
University of Colorado
Boulder, CO  80309-0359; e-mail:  feldman at stripe.colorado.edu;
telephone: (303) 492-4396; fax: (303) 492-7877