CHILDES Spanish Romero Corpus

Silvia Romero Contreras Psychology Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí silvia.romero@uaslp.mx website

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Citation information

Romero, S., Santos, A., & Pellicer, D. (1992). The construction of communicative competence in Mexican Spanish speaking children (6 months to 7 years). Mexico City: University of the Americas.

An additional reference is: Sinclair, H. (1982). Los beb. Buenos Aires: Gedisa.

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 corpus is part of a database that we are gathering of Spanish as a first language in naturalistic contexts, for the development of descriptive studies of the process of the construction of communicative competence in Spanish monolinguals.

1.1 Data Collection

Data were collected from the child in daily parent–child interaction at home. Samples were videotaped. Children in this project are selected according to the age range defined (6 months to 7 years). They, as well as their parents, have to be native Spanish speakers, residents of Mexico City for the last 5 years. Participants have to be free of any condition that may suggest abnormal development or a family history that may indicate a language impairment. Children should be free of strong cultural influences other than Mexican; therefore, those children attending bicultural schools are not eligible.

1.2 Transcription Procedure

Transcription was done directly from the videotapes with the aid of field diaries for other contextual information. Several passes of the video were often necessary. Regular spelling was the rule, except for unintelligible or child specific utterances. No translation into English has been included. Warning: Contextual information is still limited; copies of videos are available on request.

In the file name, the first and second digits stand for the lower limit of the age range of the child at the beginning of the study, expressed in years (first digit) and months (second digit). The third and fourth digits stand for sex. Twelve children are included in each age range, therefore numbers used are from 00 to 11, odd numbers are females, even numbers are males. The fifth digit stands for the child’s school option, that is, the kind of school the child attends or is going to attend: 0 = public school, 9 = private school. The sixth digit stands for the part of the corpus in the file, this data is coded progressively: 1 = first part, 2 = second part, and so forth.

Three @G gem codes are used: Sinclair lógica, Sinclair física, and Sinclair simbólico. These codes refer to specific tasks used with the children in order to assess their cognitive development taken from Sinclair (1982).

Biographical Data for participant in file 200691. Participant’s age at the beginning of the study was 2 years. He was a male. He had one older and one younger sisters. He was enrolled in a private preschool. His parents were middle-upper-class. The father was a biochemical engineer currently working in the Foreign Trade Division of a Foreign bank. The mother was a Speech and Language therapist. They were Catholics.

All the family, except for the father who grew up in Monterrey, Nuevo León, had always lived in Mexico City. The family lived in an urban home with all facilities: kitchen, three bathrooms, four bedrooms, garage, garden, and so forth. The child, at the moment of the study, shared his room with his older sister (5 years) and had for himself and his siblings a game-room full of toys of all kinds. The child likes to watch movies, the same ones over and over. His favorite activities include ball games, playing musical toy instruments, story telling, book reading and other age appropriate games.

No pseudonyms have been used, nor need to be used. Informants have given consent for the use of their data.

Acknowledgements

This project has been funded by the researchers themselves and the University of the Americas.

Usage Restrictions

We ask potential users of our data to give notice in advance to the authors, outlining the purpose of the study and specific uses to the corpus.