SUC-CORE : A Balanced Corpus Annotated with Noun Phrase Coreference

This paper describes SUC-CORE, a subset of the Stockholm Umeå Corpus and the Swedish Treebank annotated with noun phrase coreference. While most coreference annotated corpora consist of texts of similar types within related domains, SUC-CORE consists of both informative and imaginative prose and covers a wide range of literary genres and domains.This allows for exploration of coreference across different text types, but it also means that there are limited amounts of data within each type. Future work on coreference resolution for Swedish should include making more annotated data available for the research community

The MINGLE annotation scheme: Multimodal annotation of parent-child interation in a free play setting (version 1.0)

A cognitive model of language learning must be dialogue-driven and multimodal to reflect how parent and child interact, using words, eye gaze, and object manipulation. We present a scheme for multimodal annotation of parent-child interaction. The purpose is to add verbal and non-verbal annotation to a corpus of longitudinal video and sound recordings of parent-child dyads. In this guideline, we describe the transcription of adult and child speech and vocalizations, and the annotation of both empty-hand gestures and object-related actions by both adults and children.“Modelling the emergence of linguistic structures in early childhood”, funded by the Swedish Research Council as 2011-675-86010-31

Multimodal Annotation of Synchrony in Longitudinal Parent–Child Interaction

This paper describes the multimodal annotation of speech, gaze and hand movement in a corpus of longitudinal parent–child interaction,and reports results on synchrony, structural regularities which appear to be a key means for parents to facilitate learning of new conceptsto children. The results provide additional support for our previous finding that parents display decreasing synchrony as a function ofthe age of the child.MINGLE (Swedish Research Council 2011-675-86010-31

SUC-CORE: SUC 2.0 Annotated with NP Coreference

SUC-CORE is a subset of Stockholm Umeå Corpus 2.0 and Swedish Treebank, annotated with noun phrase coreference. While most coreference annotated corpora consist of texts of similar types within related domains, SUC-CORE consists of both informative and imaginative prose and covers a wide range of literary genres and domains

Reference to Objects in Longitudinal Parent-Child Interaction

A cognitive model of language learning needs to be dialogue-driven and multimodal to reflect how parent and child interact, using words, eye gaze, and object manipulation. In this paper, we present a scheme for multimodal annotation of parent-child interaction. We use this annotation for studying invariance across modalities. Our basic hypothesis is that perception of invariance (or synchrony) in multimodal patterns in auditory-visual speech is the device primarily used to reduce complexity in language learning. To this end, we have added verbal and non-verbal annotation to a corpus of longitudinal video and sound recordings of parent-child dyads. We use this data to try to determine if the amount of synchrony across modalities of parent-child interaction decreases as the child grows older and learns more language and gestures.Modelling the emergence of linguistic structures in early childhoo

Multimodal annotation of parent-child interaction in a free-play setting

This paper describes the verbal, non-verbal, and discourse annotation of a longitudinal corpus of parent-child interaction. The verbal annotation includes transcription of child-directed speech and child vocalizations. The non-verbal annotation describes gestures and objectrelatedactions by both parent and child. The verbal and non-verbal annotation is combined in discourse annotation that distinguishes initial from subsequent mentions, and further categorizes initial mentions depending on initiative.Modelling the emergence of linguistic structures in early childhoo

Modelling the Informativeness of Non-Verbal Cues in Parent–Child Interaction

Non-verbal cues from speakers, such as eye gaze and hand positions, play an important role in word learning. This is consistent with the notion that for meaning to be reconstructed, acoustic patterns need to be linked to time-synchronous patterns from at least one other modality. In previous studies of a multimodally annotated corpus of parent–child interaction, we have shown that parents interacting with infants at the early word-learning stage (7–9 months) display a large amount of time-synchronous patterns, but that this behaviour tails off with increasing age of the children. Furthermore, we have attempted to quantify the informativeness of the different nonverbal cues, that is, to what extent they actually help to discriminate between different possible referents, and how critical the timing of the cues is. The purpose of this paper is to generalise our earlier model by quantifying informativeness resulting from non-verbal cues occurring both before and after their associated verbal references.Modelling the emergence of linguistic structures in early childhoo

En korpusstudie om multimodal synkroni i tidig ordinlärning

I denna studie undersöker vi synkroni i tidig multimodal interaktion mellan föräldrar och barn. Med synkroni menas här återkommande mönster eller strukturella regelbundenheter (vad gäller ord, prosodi, blickriktning, gester och handlingar) som kan reducera komplexitet i språkinlärning. Data består av inspelningar av fem longitudinella dyader med två barn (0;7-2;7 år) och deras föräldrar. Inspelningarna transkriberas och annoteras med grundtonsfrekvens, blickriktning, gester och hantering av objekt. Vi undersöker synkroni genom att studera samtliga omnämnanden av två valda objekt (två dockor). För varje omnämnande undersöks grundtonsfrekvens och om omnämnandet kombineras med att den vuxne/barnet tittar på, pekar mot eller rör objektet. Man tänker sig att barnet använder sig av grundläggande perceptuella processer för att ta fasta på mönster och regelbundenheter i interaktionen med den vuxne, både i den akustiska signalen men också i den fysiska omgivningen (Gogate & Hollich, 2010). Den vuxne är dessutom benägen att framhäva den språkliga strukturen i interaktion med barnet, t ex genom att den vuxne talar om ett objekt och samtidigt visar objektet för barnet eller låter barnet känna på objektet. Denna synkroniserade multimodala input blir en hjälp för barnet att strukturera och sortera talsignalen och göra kopplingar mellan ord och objekt. I den här studien vill vi försöka fånga den här typen av multimodal synkroni genom att studera två specifika målord och hur interaktionen ser ut just kring dessa ord. Vi tänker oss att regelbundenheter vad gäller prosodi, blickriktningar och gester kommer att vara mer synkroniserade när barnet är mindre och målorden nya, än när barnen är äldre och målorden bekanta. Studien är del av ett projekt där vi försöker förklara tidig språkinlärning utifrån generella sociala och kognitiva förmågor. Genom att studera tidig förälder-barn-interaktion vill vi undersöka hur språkliga konstruktioner växer fram, vilka funktioner de har och hur de korrelerar med andra stimuli i barnets omgivning. Gogate, L., Hollich, G. 2010. Invariance detection within an interactive system: A perceptual gateway to language development. Psychological Review 117(2), 496-516

Disfluency in Child-Directed Speech

We report results from a longitudinal study of the rate and location of disfluencies in child-directed speech, using data for children between 0;6 and 2;9 years. We compare these results to adult-directed speech by the same speakers.Modelling the emergence of linguistic structures in early childhoo