Child Language Data Exchange System
The Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES) is an online database system that maintains and makes available content, transcripts and analysis tools for research into the disturbed and undisturbed language acquisition of children. The head office is at the psychology faculty of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, USA, there are secondary offices including mirror sites in Antwerp, Belgium, and Chukyo, Japan. CHILDES is part of the TalkBank system, which generally provides records of communication between humans and animals. All content is under the GNU General Public License and can be accessed free of charge on the web.
structure
CHILDES provides a comprehensive set of tools for researching linguistic interactions . The database contains transcripts and audio and video files from conversations between children and their carers. The conversations are saved in a special format, the CHAT format. The CLAN program is available for processing and analyzing these linguistically coded files. The conversations are also available as XML files.
history
Historical forerunners of CHILDES were works such as the 1900-1918 by the psychologist couple William and Clara Stern , which meticulously noted the development of their own growing three children largely without bias (→ diary method ). The transcripts of this scientific pioneering achievement have long been part of the CHILDES database.
literature
- Brian MacWhinney: The CHILDES project: tools for analyzing talk . Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ 1991., ISBN 978-0805810066
- Clara Stern: The language of children: A psychological and language-theoretical investigation . Scientific Book Society, ISBN 3-534-07203-0