Bulletin Autumn‧Winter 1996

Lee explains that they observed for a year t h e l a n g u a g e d e v e l o p m e n t o f e i g ht c h i l d r e n aged b e t w e e n 1 1/2 a n d 2 1/2. Their conversations w i t h parents and other adults were audio-recorded. The data were transcribed according to the format adopted by the Ch i ld Languag e Data Exchange System (CHILDES) and input as computer texts. A major outcome of the project is the creation o f a Ho n g Kong Cantonese Child Language Corpus (CANCORP) containing 14 megabytes o f tagged utterances - th e largest c h i ld language corpus to date i n Chinese-speaking communities. This corpus has been deposited at the Arts Faculty server (humanum.arts.cuhk.hk) of The Chinese Un i v e r s i ty a n d a the c h i l d l a n g u a g e a r c h i v e at Carnegie Me l l on Un i v e r s i ty ( p o p p y . p s y . cmu . e d u) i n the USA. The c omp u t e r i z a t i o n o f c h i ld language has helped speed up data analysis an d made i t more systematic. I t has also enabled the researchers to understand the characteristic s of early child Cantonese, and the ways in wh i ch i t is similar to and different from the l a n g u a ge o f n o n - Ca n t o n e se s p e a k i ng children. An illustratio n of the openingof a fil e recordingaconversationwit h a childat age 2 year s 4 months ： @Begin @Name of CHI ： Mak Hao-zhen, Bernard @Birth of CHI ： 07-September-1990 @Sex of CHI ： Male @Tape Location ： 20 @Date ： 14-January-1993 @Time duration ： 18:15-19:15 @Age of CHI： 2;04;07 @Participants ： CHI child INV investigator @Situation ： Playing at the child's house. *INV ：一九九三年一月十四日麥皓臻 %mor: q nn q cl qnn nnpp. * I N V : 皓 臻 你 玩 乜嘢 &a3? %mor: nnpp nnpr vt wh sfp. * C H I : 呢 隻 &o1. %mor: det cl sfp. *INV：呢隻咩 黎 &a3? %mor ： det cl nn sfp sfp sfp. * I N V : 你 開 咗 睇 吓 有 啲 咩 野 玩 概 2 . %mor ： nnpr vt asp vt prt vf cl wh vt sfp. 開 唔 到 & a 3 , " A " 姐 姐 倒 & a 3 . K e y %mor = the part of speech of each of the words in the preceding utterance q = quantifier nn = common nou n cl = classifier nnpp = proper noun nnpr = pronoun vt = transitive verb wh = interrogative word sfp = sentence final particle det = determiner asp = aspect marker vf = functional verb Chinese University Bulletin Autumn . Winter 1996 18