Introduction to CHILDES and TalkBank

Brian MacWhinney

CMU - Psychology, Modern Languages, Language Technologies Institute

The goal of TalkBank

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.

Principles

Data-sharing, Informed Consent

Multimedia

Open Access, Web Access, Commentary

Specified Format

Interoperability

Community integration

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

Current target areas

1. CHILDES

2. PhonBank

3. BilingualBank

4. AphasiaBank

5. CABank

6. ClassBank

CHILDES

Child Language Data Exchange System

Founded in 1984 in Concord MA

Director: Brian MacWhinney macw@cmu.edu

Programmers: Leonid Spektor, Franklin Chen

3000 Members

130 corpora

Over 3200 published articles

CHILDES and TalkBankCHILDES TalkBank

Age 23 years 7 years

Words 44 million 8 + 55 million

Media 750 GB 450GB

Languages 32 18

Publications 3200+ 89

Users 3000+ 500

Practical Considerations

Learning CLAN takes about a week

Transcription is slow. Perhaps 15:1 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 Coder’s 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.

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

CLAN Tools

Transcribing

Editing

Counts -- FREQ, KWAL

Analyses: MOR, GRASP, PHON

• Interoperability -- ELAN, Praat, SFS, EXMARaLDA, CLAPI, PHON

CA marks

inUnicod

e

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@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 +t*CHI +f sample.cha

• mlu *.cha

• Wildcards

• File output

• *.cha

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Changing Directories

• Set Working to: ne32

combo +t*MOT +s"is^*ing" *.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 +t*CHI +z50u +f *.cha

• MLU5 – maxwd +t*CHI +g1 +c5 +dl 68.cha | mlu >

68.ml5.cex

• TTR– freq +t*CHI +s"*-%%" +f *.cha

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BatchFile• maxwd +t*CHI +g1 +c5 +dl 14.cha | mlu > 14.ml5.cex

• maxwd +t*CHI +g1 +c5 +dl 55.cha | mlu > 55.ml5.cex

• maxwd +t*CHI +g1 +c5 +dl 66.cha | mlu > 66.ml5.cex

• maxwd +t*CHI +g1 +c5 +dl 68.cha | mlu > 68.ml5.cex

• maxwd +t*CHI +g1 +c5 +dl 98.cha | mlu > 98.ml5.cex

• Batch batch.cex

• Or just run by highlighting in Commands (Windows)

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Tables

Child MLU50

MLU5 TTR MLT Ratio

14 0.10 0.12 1.84 -0.90

55 -0.70 -0.65 -0.15 -0.94

66 -0.25 -0.19 -0.68 -1.14

68 3.10 2.56 -0.67 1.60

98 -0.95 -1.11 -0.55 0.31

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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 – @Begin

– @Languages: en

– @Participants: CHI Target_Child, MOT Mother, FAT Father, ROS Brother

– @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 bullets

click 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 $NIA:AC:IN

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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 @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

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

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