Salford Corpus

Transcription conventions

This corpus had to be reformatted in order to adhere the the CHILDES transcription conventions. The following modifications were made to the original transcripts:

Text as one complete block

we had to split the original transcripts into utterances to adhere to CHILDES conventions. We created separate utterances for all main clauses, and split them at the following coordinating conjunctions:
et
mais
alors
puis
ou
car

We did not split them at parce que or other subordinating conjunctions and we kept embedded clauses.

Extra syllables

Words that have been pronounced with an extra syllable when compared to ‘usual’ pronunciation are marked like this in the trancripts:

autr/e

Repetitions and Retracings

these are marked in the transcripts in the following way.

les [/] les petits hommes (repetition)

et puis le [//] les hommes (retracing - one word)

et puis <les hommes> [//] les garçons (retracing - more than one word)

Pauses

Pauses have been marked in the transcripts where the recording was carried out alone in a booth. The following information is recorded: length of run, number of syllables and length of pause.

Length of run|no. of syllables #length of pause
[^2_04|7] #1_6

(# is the CHAT code for pauses)

Liaisons

Liaisons are marked with les petits [=l] hommes.

Filled Pauses

We used the standard CHAT filled pauses (see the CHILDES transcription conventions for details).

Reported Speech

Reported speech is coded with a a [=r] the reported speech is put in angled brackets < >
il dit <qu’est ce qu’il fait ici>a [=r]

Comments

(rire) as a comment is marked as [=! rire] in the original place in the transcript. If a comment is at the start of a line it is preceded by 0 e.g. 0[= ! rire].