Units in Thai?

[Brian MacWhinney]

Dear Jordan,
  In my opinion, when analyzing Frog Story data, it is best to follow the
guidelines of Berman and Slobin, since they were designed specifically for
this type of data.  However, if you look at the various frog story corpora in
CHILDES, you will see a great amount of variation in the way in which the
criteria of Berman and Slobin have actually been implemented.
  It would be good to have a discussion of these transcription issues,
accompanied with specific examples, although I imagine it would be more
appropriate for info-chibolts than info-childes.  In any case, it seems to me
that this should not be approached initially as just a question of how to use
CHAT, but rather about how to use the Berman Slobin guidelines.  I would love
to hear from Ruth, Dan, Lowry, Michael, Ayhan, Susana, Virginia, Sven,
Barbara, Margherita, and others on this issue.
  While dealing with problems in unit analysis, you might also ask about
issues such as focusing on particularl aspects of the child's reply as the
"core response".  This is an equally challenging area.
  You should note that many of the CLAN programs recognize a secondary
clausal delimiter [c] which allows you to break up utterances into clauses.
The Wolf-Hemphill data make extensive use of this, for example.

--Brian MacWhinney