Linguistic Development Corpus
Headers used (for searching purposes)
It is important to understand how the headers work in the CHILDES system, as they contain the labels which will enable the computer to recognise files and therefore to search the corpora for individual files or batches of files.
Each file has to have a number of descriptive “headers”, as described below, and always introduced by the @ symbol:
@Language: fr
The language of the corpus; in this case French
@Participants: L45 Subject, SAR Investigator
L45 is the learner code, L is the task code and 45 the
number the number allocated to the pupil. SAR is the code for the researcher.
Each file has two ID headers one for the Subject and one for the Investigator:
@ID: fr|flloc|L45|male|11F1||Subject|5 years, 1st FL, German, Japanese
Subject: Language, corpus, participant code, sex, class, role, length of time learning French,
first foreign language learned, other foreign languages learned
@ID: fr|flloc|SAR|||||Investigator||
Investigator: Language, corpus, participant code, role
@Coder: The initials of the transcriber who added the coding