1. Introduction to CHILDES and
TalkBank
Brian MacWhinney
CMU - Psychology, Modern Languages, Language
Technologies Institute

2. The goal of TalkBank

3. 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.

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

5. 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

6. Current target areas
1. CHILDES
2. PhonBank
3. BilingualBank
4. AphasiaBank
5. CABank
6. ClassBank

7. 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

8. CHILDES and TalkBank
CHILDES 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

9. 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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10. 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

11. Why no handout?
“Overviews” link has this PPT presentation
CHILDES is now fully electronic. No more paper.
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12. 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

13. CLAN Tools
Transcribing
Editing
Counts -- FREQ, KWAL
Analyses: MOR, GRASP, PHON
Interoperability -- ELAN, Praat, SFS,
EXMARaLDA, CLAPI, PHON

14. CA
marks
in
Unicod
e

15. Transcripts linked to

16. 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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17. 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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18. Getting Set Up
Download CLAN from Programs link
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19. 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
19

20. Downloading Manuals
CHAT, CLAN
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21. 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 36

22. 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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23. F5, locate sound, enter
bullets
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24. Or use SoundWalker
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25. Or use the Video Editor
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26. 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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