linkage symbol and compound marker
Yuriko Oshima-Takane
Dear Brian,
Could you please let me know how the linkage symbol “ _” is different from
the compound marker “+”? I am presently teaching the CHAT transcription and CLAN
programs in my course and have tried to run MLU (on main tier) and MAXWD on the
same transcripts with the linkage symbol (Baby_Allison) or with the compound marker
(Baby+Allison) to understand the difference between the two symbols.
Baby_Allison/Baby+Allison occurs 6 times in the test transcripts (please see attached).
I got slightly different MLUs as well as MAXWD output (see below). For the MAXWD, the linkage
symbol“_” is counted as one letter. What about MLU counts? I thought both cases are
counted as one morpheme word but apparently not. Please let me know why.
Thanks.
Baby_Allison
> MLU +t*CHI -t%mor @
mlu +t*CHI -t%mor @
Mon Feb 06 19:24:38 2012
mlu (03-Jan-2012) is conducting analyses on:
ONLY speaker main tiers matching: *CHI;
****************************************
From file <c:\CHILDES\psyc561\data\lab12012\Alisson22testmlu#3.cha>
MLU for Speaker: *CHI
MLU (xxx, yyy and www are EXCLUDED from the utterance and morpheme counts):
Number of: utterances = 22, words = 40
Ratio of words over utterances = 1.818
Standard deviation = 0.936
Baby+Allison
> MLU +t*CHI -t%mor @
mlu +t*CHI -t%mor @
Mon Feb 06 19:25:10 2012
mlu (03-Jan-2012) is conducting analyses on:
ONLY speaker main tiers matching: *CHI;
****************************************
From file <c:\CHILDES\PSYC561\DATA\LAB12012\Alisson22testmlu#4.cha>
MLU for Speaker: *CHI
MLU (xxx, yyy and www are EXCLUDED from the utterance and morpheme counts):
Number of: utterances = 22, words = 43
Ratio of words over utterances = 1.955
Standard deviation = 0.976
> maxwd +t*mot @
maxwd +t*mot @
Mon Feb 06 19:41:29 2012
maxwd (03-Jan-2012) is conducting analyses on:
ONLY speaker main tiers matching: *MOT;
****************************************
From file <c:\CHILDES\PSYC561\DATA\LAB12012\Alisson22testmlu#3.cha>
*** File "c:\CHILDES\PSYC561\DATA\LAB12012\Alisson22testmlu#3.cha": line 13: 12 characters long:
baby_allison
*** File "c:\CHILDES\PSYC561\DATA\LAB12012\Alisson22testmlu#3.cha": line 24: 12 characters long:
baby_allison
*** File "c:\CHILDES\PSYC561\DATA\LAB12012\Alisson22testmlu#3.cha": line 41: 12 characters long:
baby_allison
Mon Feb 06 19:40:22 2012
maxwd (03-Jan-2012) is conducting analyses on:
ONLY speaker main tiers matching: *MOT;
****************************************
From file <c:\CHILDES\PSYC561\DATA\LAB12012\Alisson22testmlu#4.cha>
*** File "c:\CHILDES\PSYC561\DATA\LAB12012\Alisson22testmlu#4.cha": line 13: 11 characters long:
baby+allison
*** File "c:\CHILDES\PSYC561\DATA\LAB12012\Alisson22testmlu#4.cha": line 24: 11 characters long:
baby+allison
*** File "c:\CHILDES\PSYC561\DATA\LAB12012\Alisson22testmlu#4.cha": line 41: 11 characters long:
baby+allison
Yuriko
Brian MacWhinney
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<Alisson22testmlu#3.cha><Alisson22testmlu#4.cha>
Yuriko Oshima-Takane
Hi Brian,
Thanks for the clarification. I just wanted to know if the compound marker and the linkage symbol work differently in order to explain them to students in my class. I am not serious about calculating MLUs on main tiers, too. I teach them how to run MOR and MLU on %mor after teaching how to calculate MLUs on main tiers simply because they seem to understand what MOR does better.
Yuriko
From: Brian MacWhinney [mailto:ma...@cmu.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, February 07, 2012 3:26 PM
To: chib...@googlegroups.com; Yuriko Oshima-Takane
Subject: Re: linkage symbol and compound marker
Dear Yuriko,
The plus is used to mark the pieces of real compounds that are created by productive compounding
processes. The underscore is used for combinations of words or word pieces. The form Baby_Allison
is correct, because this is not a compound. Of course, you could also have Baby Allison with spaces,
but having Baby_Allison reflects the unitary nature of the combination.
In terms of MLU, I would not take any analysis that uses the main line instead of the %mor line seriously.
However, your question is still valid in either case. For both the main and the %mor line, compounds are
treated as multi-morphemic. I think that decision is clearly correct. However, words with the underline are
treated as monomorphemic. This could be questioned. The problem is that words with the underline
form a real grab bag of different structures and it is not clear how to treat them all. If you wish, you could
change the delimiter set for MLU to include the underscore and then they would be treated as
multimorphemic. Or you could decide to transcribed as "Baby Allison" or even "baby Allison".
-- Brian
On Feb 6, 2012, at 7:55 PM, Yuriko Oshima-Takane wrote:
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