CHILDES English Nelson Corpus

Katherine Nelson (1930-2018) Developmental Psychology City University of New York Graduate Center website

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Citation information

Nelson, K. (Ed.) (1989). Narratives from the crib. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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

Emily was born in February 14, 1980. This data set was collected over a 15-month period (November 1981 to February 1983) when the child Emily was 21 to 36 months old. The child’s parents recorded their conversations and the child’s spontaneous speech while alone after they left her room at night or at nap time. The recordings were done under the direction of Katherine Nelson. A casette recorder was placed under Emily’s crib. Tape recordings were made more frequently in the first few months. Tapes were reviewed and commented upon by the child’s mother, and were initially transcribed by both the mother and the researcher. Different researchers reviewed the tapes over a 2-year period. The final transcription made available to CHILDES has revised some of the original versions for consistency and accuracy. The data have been reported in a number of previous publications, and the study is documented more fully in Nelson (1989). There may be minor discrepancies in the version delivered to CHILDES compared with published excerpts. Such discrepancies are to be expected given the difficulties of interpreting speech of a child talking to herself at this age. The tapes contain many references to individuals in addition to parents and child, including baby-sitter (Tanta), grandmother (Mormor); baby brother (Stephen), and friend Carl. The names of other friends and relations have been changed for confidentiality, and are not necessarily consistent with the names used in previous publications (which were also substitutes). Last names have been consistently deleted, although in some cases this interrupts the rhythmic quality of the talk. Permission to use the data for research must be obtained before publication is contemplated.