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Introduction to CHILDES and TalkBank

• Brian MacWhinney
• CMU - Psychology, Modern Languages, Language
  Technologies Institute

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The goal of TalkBank
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The core idea

• Human communication is a single unified process.
• However, patterns in communication are analyzed
  by 20 different fields.
• The time scales of the processes varies from
  milliseconds to centuries.
• But all of these processes must have their
  ultimate effect in the Moment.
• We can capture the Moment on video.

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Principles

• Data-sharing, Informed Consent
• Multimedia
• Open Access, Web Access, Commentary
• Specified Format
• Interoperability
• Community integration

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Availability

• http//childes.psy.cmu.edu
• http//talkbank.org
• programs, manuals, fonts, morphologies, CA
  conventions, video production guides, XML Schema,
  links to other programs
• data can be either downloaded or played back over
  the web

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Current target areas

• CHILDES
• PhonBank
• BilingualBank
• AphasiaBank
• CABank
• ClassBank

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CHILDES

• Child Language Data Exchange System
• Founded in 1984 in Concord MA
• Director Brian MacWhinney macw_at_cmu.edu
• Programmers Leonid Spektor, Franklin Chen
• 3000 Members
• 130 corpora
• Over 3200 published articles

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CHILDES and TalkBank
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Practical Considerations

• Learning CLAN takes about a week
• Transcription is slow. Perhaps 151 ratio.
  Blitzscribe, LENA, etc. probably will not work
• Currently available data may not be perfect for a
  given issue
• Corpora may need enhancement through MOR or
  Coders editor

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Tools from the Web

• Data childes.psy.cmu.edu/data
• CLAN childes.psy.cmu.edu/clan
• Manuals childes.psy.cmu.edu/manuals
• Morphosyntax childes.psy.cmu.edu/morgrams
• Phon childes.psy.cmu.edu/phon
• Tutorial videos talkbank.org/training
• Digital video talkbank.org/dv
• CA Methods talkbank.org/CABank

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Why no handout?

• Overviews link has this PPT presentation
• CHILDES is now fully electronic. No more paper.

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Available Methods

• Microanalysis - CA, phonetics, ethology
• Microgenetic analysis - CA, code-switching
  (NEXT)
• Group and treatment comparisons - Genesee
• Error analysis - YipMatthews
• Diffusion analysis - in preschools
• Longitudinal studies - growth curves
• Modeling - neural nets, dynamic systems,
  evolutionary models

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CLAN Tools

• Transcribing
• Editing
• Counts -- FREQ, KWAL
• Analyses MOR, GRASP, PHON
• Interoperability -- ELAN, Praat, SFS, EXMARaLDA,
  CLAPI, PHON

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CA marks inUnicode
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Transcripts linked to media
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Ground Rules

• Ethical use, informed consent
• Levels of permission
• Respect for dignity of participants
• Respect for contributors
• Requirement to cite sources
• Requirement to contribute data

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Info-CHILDES and Membership

• Info-childes_at_googlegroups.com
• Archived at LinguistList
• Info-CHIBolts for nuts and bolts
• Membership list
• IASCL Membership

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Getting Set Up

• Download CLAN from Programs link

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Windows issues

• You can work in c\childes
• But your administrator may have this locked, so,
  you may need shortcuts.
• Windows IPA is difficult.
• Windows compression may produce .wmf

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Downloading Manuals

• CHAT, CLAN

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Getting Started

• Open CLAN Manual to Chapter 2
• Double-click application
• Control-D to open Commands Window
• Set Working Directory to
• c\childes\clan\lib\samples

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Should look like this

• Windows will be c\childes\clan\lib\samples

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Run FREQ

• Freq sample.cha
• Hit RUN or carriage return
• In output, does want occur 3 times?

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Interface Features

• Help
• CLAN
• Files In
• Recall
• Set MOR, Lib, Output directories

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Files In
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Building Commands

• mlu tCHI f sample.cha
• mlu .cha
• Wildcards
• File output
• .cha

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Changing Directories

• Set Working to ne32
• combo tMOT s"ising" .cha
• Set Working to samples
• kwal sbunny w2 -w2 0042.cha
• Triple click on output line to go back to source
  file

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GEM

• Set Working to Workshop
• GEM s pau001.cha
• Open output, play audio

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Exercises - Chapter 8

• MLU50
• mlu tCHI z50u f .cha
• MLU5
• maxwd tCHI g1 c5 dl 68.cha mlu gt
  68.ml5.cex
• TTR
• freq tCHI s"-" f .cha

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BatchFile

• maxwd tCHI g1 c5 dl 14.cha mlu gt
  14.ml5.cex
• maxwd tCHI g1 c5 dl 55.cha mlu gt
  55.ml5.cex
• maxwd tCHI g1 c5 dl 66.cha mlu gt
  66.ml5.cex
• maxwd tCHI g1 c5 dl 68.cha mlu gt
  68.ml5.cex
• maxwd tCHI g1 c5 dl 98.cha mlu gt
  98.ml5.cex
• Batch batch.cex
• Or just run by highlighting in Commands (Windows)

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Tables
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The Editor
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Playing a linked file

• Esc-8
• Esc-A
• Cont-Click
• F5

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Linking a File - F5

• Cursor on FAT
• Find file
• F5
• Press space for each utterance
• Save

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F5 Tricks

• Go back to last good link
• Space quickly through contained overlap
• If a bullet is missing, cut and paste an old one
• For precision, try Sonic Mode

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Sonic Mode

• Esc-0 to start
• Highlight area
• Shift-click to move edge
• Have cursor on line in file
• S to insert time marks
• Triple click a linked sentence

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Transcribing

• Open new window (Command-N)
• Insert headers
• _at_Begin
• _at_Languages en
• _at_Participants CHI Target_Child, MOT Mother, FAT
  Father, ROS Brother
• _at_Date
• F5 with space at each utterance
• Go back and transcribe each bullet (c-click)
• Adjust time marks using Esc-A

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F5, locate sound, enter bulletsclick on bullets,
transcribe
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Or use SoundWalker
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Or use the Video Editor
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CHECK

• CHECK is CRUCIAL
• Internal Esc-L
• External check .cha
• External CHECK provides fuller control

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Options

• Backup
• Wrapping
• Line Numbers
• CHECK

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More Options

• Line numbers F5 bullets SoundAnalyzer

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Coder's Editor

• Open barry.cha
• Esc-0
• Cursor on first line
• Open codeshar.cut
• spa
• Insert NIAACIN

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Coder's Editor Commands

• F1 finish current tier and go to the next
• Esc-c finish coding current tier
• Esc-t restrict coding to a particular speaker
• Esc-Esc go on to the next speaker
• Esc-s rotate subcodes
• Control-g cancel illegal command

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Send to Praat

• Open Praat, Click before link, Send to Praat, Run
  Analysis

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Learning to Digitize
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Searching, Replacing

• Cont-R, Cont-F
• Space, No, !, control-G

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Fixing Things

• CHSTRING
• INSERT (inserts _at_ID headers)
• FIXIT
• LONGTIER
• FIXBULLETS
• REN
• COMBTIER

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Tour of English MOR Files

• Download a copy
• A-rules
• C-rules
• Sf.cut
• Lexicon

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Running MOR

• Set MOR directory
• mor xi (dogs)
• mor xl barry.cha
• Open barry.ulx.cex
• Fix problems using KWAL
• mor .cha

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POST

• mor barry.cha 1 or else
• mor barry.cha and then
• ren .mor.cex .cha f
• post .cha 1

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Fixing POST

• POST is 95 accurate, but some projects need 100
  accuracy
• Eve training set may need error checking
• More data will train a better POST
• POST training is mostly about bootstrapping,
  using regexp to find and correct subcases leading
  to error
• Need to remove some POS possibilities and add
  them back through post-POST rules (spell as N)

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CHAT

• What is an utterance?
• What is a word?
• Tour of the CHAT manual

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Web Browsing of Video
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Some examples

• Forrester
• Rollins
• Yasmin
• Paulo
• Brent, MacWhinney
• Classroom - JLS

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Rollins Coding
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Conclusions

• CHILDES and TalkBank provide solid tools for
  studying language learning and functioning
• Data-sharing has led to major advances in the
  field
• New approaches emphasize the use of multimedia
  analysis, computational linguistics, and speech
  technology