CHILDES Afrikaans Stellenbosch Corpus

Ondene Van Dulm Department of General Linguistics University of Stellenbosch ondenevandulm@gmail.com website

Cecile le Roux Organization and Behavior Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar ocleroux@andrew.cmu.edu

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In accordance with TalkBank rules, any use of data from this corpus must be accompanied by at least one of the above references.

Project Description

This project was headed by Cecile le Roux, formerly of the Department of General Linguistics of the University of Stellenbosch. Ondene van Dulm collected, transcribed, and coded the data. The aim of the project was the creation of a detailed computerized database on the acquisition of South African Languages. Data were collected for the following :

• 2 children age (Chanel and Jean) 18m-3yrs, acquiring Afrikaans as L1
• 3 English L1 children age 5-7yrs, acquiring Afrikaans as L2
• 4 Xhosa L1 children age 6-9, acquiring Afrikaans as L2
• 2 Xhosa L1 children age 14-15, acquiring Afrikaans as L2
• 2 Afrikaans L1 children age 5, acquiring English as L2

The data consist of the spontaneous utterances of the children, elicited in environments familiar to the children, at daycare, school or at home. The data collectors included assistants and lecturers of the General Linguistics Department of Stellenbosch University. These people included Ondene van Dulm, Simone Conradie, and Debra Aarons. The utterances were elicited in a free play situation with the younger children, and in conversation with the older children. Video recordings were made of the two toddlers, and audio recordings of the rest of the subjects. Transcriptions were done by the various data collectors, and every transcription was checked for reliability by another member of the team. Only the utterances relevant to the study were transcribed - please see warnings. To date, only the data of the two toddlers, acquiring Afrikaans as L1 has been coded. The remaining data will be coded in 2000.

Chanel Leuvenink. (Permission to use real name.) Born 29/10/96. Female. Only child. Afrikaans-speaking, both parents Afrikaans-speaking. The 32 files for Chanel represent sessions that begin on 30/4/98 at the age of 1;6 and continue every other week to 14/10/99 at the age of 2;11.7. Chanel was recorded by video camera, either at her daycare centre or at home. At the daycare centre she usually sat in a quiet room alone with the investigator, Ondene van Dulm, and looked at books and played with toys. At home, her mother Ria was included in the recordings, and Chanel played freely in the sitting-room, study and her own bedroom. She had a great variety of toys and books. At times, other people were also present for the recordings, including her father, Kimo, members of her extended family, and the daughter of the investigator, Enya.

Jean Kriel. (Permission to use real name.) Born 14/10/96. Male. Younger of two. Older brother 13 years of age. Afrikaans-speaking, both parents and brother Afrikaans-speaking. The 32 file for Jean begin on 30/4/98 at the age of 1;6.15 and continue every other week to 5/10/99 at the age of 2;11;21. Jean was recorded by video camera, at home, at first by the recorder, Ondene van Dulm, and later by his mother. The video camera was simply switched on to record at various times during his daily activities, including dinner time, bath time, play time, story time etc. At times, Jean's older brother Lexie and/or father Lex was also present.

Chanel used the following onomatopoeic forms: moo = koei = cow, woef-woef or woef or woefie = hond = dog, peep-peep = toet = hoot, and ooo = bird song. Chanel used the following child-based forms: doedoe = slaap = sleep, nana = lekker(s) = sweet(s) or nice, babie = baba = baby, Ponia = Tolia = Pretoria, pokkipaai = poppiepaia = porcupine, bollie / gebollie = pooh / poohed. hello = telefoon = telephone, eina = seer = sore, siesa = sies = ugh, oraait = all right, nana = piesang = banana

Jean used the following onomatopoeic forms: woef = hond = dog, aargh = brul = roar, uughh = sleg = bad/yuk. Jean used the following child-based forms: mama = kamera = camera, ba = boom = tree, pang = slang = snake, ku = kous = sock, mys = roomys = ice-cream, Charla = Charlie = Charlie, pillie = pilletjie = pill-dim, pikillie = pilletjie = pill-dim, gaga = vuil (doek) = soiled, Jenna = Jemina = Jemina, ies = iets = something, eina = seerplek = sore, eina = seer (adj) = sore, bottie = bottel = bottle, babie = baba(tjie) = baby, vakie = vakie(s) = tired, trekkie = toutjie = rope-dim, bzz = by = bee, opskim = opklim = climb up, and buks = hit.

Warnings

As the researchers were interested only in various aspects of syntactic development as from the stage of two-word utterances, only such utterances were transcribed and coded. Recording only began when the subject was consistently using two- or more word utterances, and single-word utterances were not transcribed or coded. Utterances of the other participants, which surrounded single-word utterances of the subject, were also excluded from the transcription. Only the contextually relevant utterances of other participants, were transcribed. Also note that cases of suspected ellipsis were not filled in, as the investigators did not feel justified in making assumptions about what the child intended to say.