comparing files in CHILDES

[Brian MacWhinney]

Dear Darinka,

  First, for the comparison of coding lines, you can use the RELY program in
CLAN which is specifically designed to address this type of application.
However, RELY assumes that the second coder used the same master file as the
first coder and it appears from your message that you do not yet know about
RELY and may not have used this procedure.  So, for future work, you should
try to follow the procedure required by RELY.
  The application of RELY also assumes that you used Coder's Editor to
create your codes, although this is not a formal requirement.  It is just
that the codes created by Coder's Editor are guaranteed to have at least the
right characters and spacing and to only contain substantive disagreements
between coders.
 Second, it seems that you also want to spot all the differences in the
transcription itself.  In theory, this could be done by using the DIFF
program.  This is a standard Unix utility.  On Mac, you can get it through
BBEdit.  On Windows, I think you could get it through the Epsilon editor.  I
think that Word may also have a facility like this, although I am not sure.
In any case, when you run DIFF you will undoubtedly end up with an enormous
number of minor differences, many caused by minor things like spacing and
such.  It is possible that some version of DIFF then takes you the next step
and tries to work with you to resolve transcription differences.  However,
my experiences with DIFF suggest that, at this point, you would essentially
be in the position of going through the whole pair of transcripts by hand.
  To make a long story short, it has seemed to me that the part of this
process that it makes best sense to automate is the part that is done
through Coder's Editor and RELY.  The part that would require the complete
operation of DIFF is a much bigger and more difficult matter.  After you
have worked with DIFF for a few days, you may have ideas about automation
and then I would be happy to discuss how to work on this.  For example, my
programmer has combined the use of DIFF with Perl scripts that negotiate
uninteresting differences spotted by DIFF.  If you have someone who could
write the necessary additional Perl scripts, we could explain this process
to you.
  One part of your message that I do not understand is the claim that
"making corrections before coding is not a solution to the problem".  But
perhaps we could discuss this and related issues on
info-chibolts at mail.talkbank.org instead of info-childes at mail.talkbank.org,
since these questions may get into "nuts and bolts".

--Brian MacWhinney


On 6/13/03 3:49 AM, "Darinka Andjelkovic" <dandjelk at f.bg.ac.yu> wrote:

> Dear colleagues,
> I need assistance in organizing team work on a corpus of child langauge.
>
> We have a file with child language transcribed in CHILDES, a coding team
> working on several copies of the same file, and we need to achieve a high
> level of accordance between coding of different people. In the process,
> coders would find necessary to make corrections in file, and at the end we
> would get different versions of the same file (different files) that
> possibly differ not only in coding tiers but also in the main  lines and
> other dependent tiers.
>
> I need to know is there any ellegant way to make comparisons between the
> outcome files that would enable us:
> 1. to detect all the differences between files (I hope for an automatic
> tool)
> 2. to make final decision what solution of particular spot in transript we
> agree on (this we have to do by ourselves),
> 3. to retrieve a critical part that we agreed on and paste it to the archive
> (again hope for an automatic tool).
>
> I want to emphasis that making corrections before coding is not solution of
> the problem (btw. proof reading is already finished) because some features
> of interaction and utterances become obvious only while working on coding.
>
> Is this too difficult? I guess other people had similar problems. I would
> appreciate any help.
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> Darinka Andjelkovic
> dandjelk at f.bg.ac.yu
> Laboratory for Experimental Psyhology
> Faculty of Philosophy
> University of Belgrade
> Serbia and Montenegro
>
>
>
>