You’re researching language acquisition in multilingual children. What’s the best tool to use?

2 Why use CHILDES?

CHILDES offers several advantages for researching language acquisition in multilingual children. First, it gives you access to a large and diverse corpus of naturalistic data that reflects the real-life situations and challenges that multilingual children face. You can compare and contrast the language development of children from different backgrounds, settings, and modes of exposure. Second, it allows you to use standardized and reliable methods for transcribing, annotating, and analyzing the data. You can apply the same conventions and criteria for coding and measuring various aspects of language, such as vocabulary, grammar, pragmatics, and phonology. Third, it enables you to collaborate and communicate with other researchers who use CHILDES. You can share your data, findings, and questions with the CHILDES community, and benefit from the feedback and support of other experts in the field.

4 How to learn CHILDES?

CHILDES has a comprehensive and detailed documentation that guides you through the steps and features of using the database and the tools. You can find the documentation on the CHILDES website, under the Manuals section. There, you can access the CHAT manual, which explains how to transcribe and annotate the data, the CLAN manual, which explains how to use the CLAN commands and functions, and the Phon manual, which explains how to use the Phon program and interface. You can also find tutorials, videos, and examples on the CHILDES website, under the Tutorials section. Additionally, you can join the CHILDES mailing list, where you can ask questions, share tips, and receive updates from the CHILDES developers and users.

5 What are the limitations of CHILDES?

CHILDES is not a perfect tool, and it has some limitations that you should be aware of. One limitation is that CHILDES does not provide audio or video recordings of the interactions, only transcripts. This means that you cannot hear or see the actual speech and gestures of the children and their interlocutors, which might affect your interpretation and analysis of the data. Another limitation is that CHILDES does not have a uniform quality and quantity of data for all languages and groups. Some languages and groups are more represented and documented than others, which might limit your scope and generalizability of your research. A third limitation is that CHILDES does not have a standardized and consistent way of coding and measuring multilingualism. Different researchers might use different definitions and criteria for identifying and classifying multilingual children, which might affect your comparison and evaluation of the data.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?