Kathryn corpus

Wed Apr 30 19:48:24 UTC 2003

Dear Info-CHILDES,
  I am happy to announce the arrival of the third installment of the
Yip-Matthews corpus on three Cantonese-English children in Hong Kong.  This
new corpus, the Kathryn corpus, has a full set of files in both primarily
English and primarily Cantonese linked to the audio.  These files are at
http://childes.psy.cmu.edu/media/audlink

The full documentation for this fascinating new data set is give here.  Many
thanks to Virginia Yip, Huang Yue Yuan, and Steven Matthews for this
contribution.

--Brian MacWhinney

The Hong Kong Bilingual Child Language Corpus: Longitudinal data for Kathryn

(3;06.18-4;06.07)

Virginia Yip, Stephen Matthews and Huang Yue Yuan

Chinese University of Hong Kong, University of Hong Kong & Hong Kong Baptist
University

The corpus of Kathryn¹s bilingual development constitutes the third
installment of the Hong Kong Bilingual Child Language Corpus. Kathryn was
born in Hong Kong on January 23, 1992. Her siblings are James (four years
and eight months older) and Alasdair (one year and nine months older), who
also feature in the recordings occasionally. Her father, a neuro-surgeon at
a university hospital, is a native speaker of Cantonese and her mother of
British English. The mother, a housewife at the time of study, was the
principal caregiver. The family employed a Filipina domestic helper for a
brief period until Kathryn was around age 3, and subsequently a part-time
Cantonese cleaner who also spoke fluent English.

Kathryn attended the Cantonese section of an international Kindergarten from
2;07. According to her mother¹s observations this set her subsequent pattern
of language use: with her friends mostly Cantonese-speaking. In April 2003
Kathryn is now eleven years old and she was reported to use more Cantonese
as the language of social interaction, while English is the language for
academic settings.

Audio recording was conducted by two research assistants in each recording
session, one responsible for each language, from 15 November 1994 (2;09.23)
to 30 July 1996 (4;06.07) on a bi-weekly basis. The data initially released
total 26 files (13 in each language) on a monthly basis from 3;06.18 --
4;06.07. In each recording session one research assistant interacted with
the child for approximately half an hour in English and the other for half
an hour in Cantonese.

Of the five Cantonese-English bilingual children studied to date, Kathryn
shows the most balanced pattern of development, with relatively little
evidence of language dominance or concomitant transfer compared to the
siblings, Timmy and Sophie who show dominance in Cantonese over English.

A perhaps unintentionally funny remark:

Ngo5 de1di4 hai6 zing2 tau4 gaa3    (3;11;27) file Kc960119

My  daddy  is  do  head PRT

ŒMy daddy fixes heads.¹

In Cantonese this would normally denote a hairdresser, but here describes
her father¹s work as a neurosurgeon. Photographs of Kathryn from infancy to
primary school can be viewed at http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/ils/home/kathryn.htm

All the transcripts released in this corpus are linked to the audio files.
One can read the transcript while listening to the interaction between the
child and the research assistants.

Acknowledgments

Investigation of Kathryn's bilingual development was undertaken as part of

the project "The Development of Bilingual Competence in Hong Kong Children"
funded by the Research Grants Council (RGC ref. no. HKU 336/94H) and
subsequently funded by the project "A Cantonese-English Bilingual Child
Language Corpus" (RGC ref. no. CUHK4002/97H) and the current project
"Multimedia Perspectives on Bilingual Development". (CUHK 4014/02H) The
recording of Kathryn could not have been so successful and enjoyable without
the generous support of her parents and siblings. We are especially indebted
to Kathryn¹s mother Gillian for all the help she rendered over the years of
our investigation. We also gratefully acknowledge the support and help of
the colleagues and students who have been friends and supporters of our work
over the years. Among them, special thanks are due to Winnie Chan, Linda
Peng Ling Ling, Bella Leung, Lawrence Cheung,  Gene Chu, Betty Chan, Chen Ee
San, Michelle Li, Emily Ma, Uta Lam, Richard Wong and Angel Chan: a
dedicated team who became part of the family and friends of the children. We
thank Mary MacWhinney for digitizing a substantial portion of Kathryn¹s
tapes for us in Spring 2001. Brian MacWhinney's impressive technical
know-how and practical tips have greatly facilitated the completion of the
corpus and production of the entire audio-linked corpus. His input during
and after his sabbatical in Hong Kong in 2000-2001 has made all the
difference to every aspect of the corpus.

Publications based on the Hong Kong Bilingual Child Language Corpus:

Matthews, S. & V. Yip. 2003. Relative clauses in early bilingual
development: transfer and universals. In Giacalone, A. (ed.) Typology and
Second Language Acquisition, pp.39-81. Berlin and New York: Mouton de
Gruyter.

Yip, V. 2002. "Early syntactic development in Cantonese-English bilingual
children." Keynote speech delivered at the 9th International Symposium on
Contemporary Linguistics in China, organized by the Chinese Academy of
Social Sciences and Beijing Foreign Studies University, PRC.

Yip, V. (To appear). "Early syntactic development in Cantonese-English
bilingual children." Contemporary Linguistics

Yip, V. (To appear). "Early bilingual development in the Chinese context."
In Li P., L-H .Tan, E. Bates & Tzeng, O. (eds.) Handbook of East Asian
Psycholinguistics (Vol.1). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Yip, V. and Matthews, S. "Syntactic transfer in a bilingual child."
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 3.3, 193-208.

For this release, there is a total of 26 files, half in Cantonese and half

in English and there are two files for the same date since they were

recorded on the same day. The file name is made up of Kathryn's initial K,
followed by the initial that stands for the language, either c for Cantonese
or e for English, followed by the year, month and date of recording, e.g.
Kc951020 refers to the Cantonese file containing the recording made in the
year 1995, October 20 and Ke951020 refers to the English file for the
recording made on the same date. Thus each of the 26 files has a unique file
name.

Inventory of Kathryn¹s files

File no. File name (Kcyymmdd) File no. File name (Keyymmdd) Age of CHI
1 Kc950810 14 Ke950810 3;06.18
2 Kc950905 15 Ke950905 3;07.13
3 Kc951020 16 Ke951020 3;08.27
4 Kc951117 17 Ke951117 3;09.25
5 Kc951220 18 Ke951220 3;10.27
6 Kc960119 19 Ke960119 3;11.27
7 Kc960207 20 Ke960207 4;00.15
8 Kc960304 21 Ke960304 4;01.09
9 Kc960409 22 Ke960409 4;02.17
10 Kc960508 23 Ke960508 4;03.15
11 Kc960621 24 Ke960621 4;04.29
12 Kc960703 25 Ke960703 4;05.10
13 Kc960730 26 Ke960730 4;06.07