We’re primarily interested in interactions between the primary caregiver and the child subject (target child). The primary caregiver, herein PCG, is often the subject’s mother but may be the father or even both parents in some instances. There will be other kinds of speech in your tapes; you may encounter everything from the speech of siblings and non-PCG parents to that of aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, friends, pizza-delivery men, etc. In addition, there are many different kinds of speech that these people can produce: normal speech, reading, singing, praying, etc. This section is intended to help you determine what speech makes it into our final transcripts, what doesn’t make it, and what is noted in the context column but not transcribed. In general, we only transcribe spontaneous PCG and child speech. We avoid transcribing ritualized or memorized speech, as well as the speech of anyone other than the child and the PCG(s).
Transcribe all primary caregiver speech directed at the child subject and vice versa.
If the father is the primary caregiver or the co-primary caregiver, transcribe his speech in the p_utts column and put the F symbol in the key column. Write an F in the key column for every father utterance. If the father requires another key code, place the F code directly before the next code (i.e. without a space). If he requires multiple codes, place the F symbol in front of each code.
| key | p_utts |
|---|---|
| F | hey, kiddo, where do you think you’re going? |
| F* Fr | I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house in. |
Note
This rule was put into effect in December 2008. The prior convention was to place the @ symbol in the key column to denote father speech. It was changed to F for several reasons:
You should transcribe all words and indefinite communicative sounds, such as hmm, uh, etc. When transcribing communicative sounds such as these, consult the list of conventional spellings and use only spellings from the list.
Do not transcribe utterances spoken entirely in a non-English language. Simply place three dashes --- in the utts column and an l in the key column.
If there are only one or two foreign words, transcribe the utterance as much as you can, placing an @f symbol directly after the foreign word (e.g. Can you abre@f the door?) if you can recognize and spell it. If not, place three pound signs ### in its place. In both cases, also mark an l in the key column. See Section 6.1.1 for more on the @ symbol and Section 6.10 for more on transcribing foreign words.
During literacy visits with older children, the primary conversational partner will not be a PCG but rather the experimenter. For literacy visits only, transcribe and code experimenter speech and gesture as you would PCG speech and gesture. Make a note on the Info Page that the person being transcribed in the p_utts column is the experimenter.
If a PCG also speaks to the child during a literacy visit, transcribe their speech as usual, putting in the key column a capital M if the mother is speaking and an F if the father is speaking. If PCG and experimenter speak to each other, place three dashes --- in the p_utts column as usual, placing the appropriate codes in the key column (see Section 2.3.1 for which codes to use). Both the M and F codes behave exactly like the F code in Section 2.1.1.
For literacy visits only, place a lowercase m in the key column if the child speaks to the mother and a lowercase f if the child speaks to the father. Since the primary conversational partner should be the experimenter, hopefully there will not be many cases where the child speaks to a parent. However, if it does occur, placing these codes will be helpful in following the dialogue of the transcript. For home visits, continue to leave the key column empty if the child speaks to the mother or father, but place codes when speaking to other entities (see Section 2.3.1 ).
| key | p_utts | c_utts | example |
|---|---|---|---|
| that’s a pretty dress | E speaks to C | ||
| my mommy made it | C speaks to E | ||
| M | what do you want for dinner, honey? | M speaks to C | |
| m | spaghetti! | C speaks to M | |
| Me | — | M speaks to E | |
| m | — | E speaks to M |
Note
Notice the distinction between the capitalized codes M and F and the lowercase codes m and f. Capitalized key codes indicate that that person’s speech is being transcribed, while lowercase key codes indicate that that person is being spoken to.
Transcribe all PCG and subject child speech directed towards the children living in the home under the age of 13. However, be sure to mark such utterances with an asterisk * in the key column.
If there is more than one live-in child present at the time of transcription, indicate which child the PCG or subject child is talking to in the key column. To do this, assign each non-subject child a number and put an asterisk immediately followed by that child’s number in the key column. For example, if a child has a brother (Jeff) and a sister (Alana), say that Jeff is sibling 1 and Alana is sibling 2. When the PCG or C talks to Alana, type *2 in the key column, and when the PCG or C talks to Jeff type *1 in the key column. If the PCG or C talks to both siblings, type *12. Indicate which sibling gets which number in the cast section of the Info Page.
If the father is the PCG, still put F followed by *, 1, etc. for each father utterance.
We do NOT transcribe the PCG speech to siblings if the siblings are being home-schooled and the PCG is conducting a home-school lesson (this will be rare).
You DO NOT transcribe PCG speech directed towards anyone else, e.g., pets or anybody over the age of 13, but you DO transcribe child speech to these entities.
If the PCG does speak to any of these people or animals, put three dashes --- in the p_utts column and the appropriate code in the key column:
| Code | Target of Speech |
|---|---|
| f | father |
| m | mother (when father is PCG or during literacy visits) |
| e | experimenter |
| o | other person |
| i | self |
| t | phone |
| d | pet or plant |
Only type one of the above codes plus dashes once for every time the PCG starts talking to one of the entities listed above. That means, if the PCG talks on the phone for ten minutes without paying attention to the target child or a child under 13 in the house, you would still only put --- in the p_utts column and t in the key column once, NOT after every child utterance.
If the PCG is talking to another entity and interrupts herself to talk to the child, then transcribe the child-directed speech. If the PCG returns to who she was talking to before, put a new key code and dashes in the appropriate columns:
| key | p_utts | Context |
|---|---|---|
| t | — | |
| honey, stop it! | C screaming in background | |
| t | — |
If the subject child speaks to any of the entities listed above, transcribe it as usual in the c_utts column and include the corresponding code in the key column. We want to include as much information as possible to allow researchers to easily use our data in the future. Thus, if the child is engaged in a conversation and there is no explicit conversational partner (i.e. nothing being transcribed in the p_utts column), record who the child is speaking to by placing the code in the key column. This will also include the * key code for siblings. For literacy visits only, it will also include m and f (see Section 2.1.4.2).
If there is an extended interaction between the PCG or C and a non-transcribed entity, make a brief note in the context column. It is only necessary to make a note one time per interaction. Again, this makes it easier for future researchers when they look over transcripts and for the transcriber when placing x and xc codes in the key column (see Section 2.10 for more on x and xc).
If the child responds to a normally non-transcribed utterance from the PCG directed to another entity (see Section 2.3.1), transcribe the PCG utterance that C responded to, put an a next to it in the key column, and make a note in the context column:
| key | p_utts | c_utts | context |
|---|---|---|---|
| f | — | ||
| a | when are you coming home tonight? | M talking to F | |
| go home! | |||
| f | — | ||
| Fe | — | ||
| Fa | we’re going to American_Girl_Place tomorrow. | F talking to E | |
| can she come with us? |
Transcribe all reading from PCG and child and place an r in the key column. We transcribe reading because some researchers are interested in the input a child gets from hearing books, as well as the child’s speech as he or she is learning to read.
Transcribe PCG’s and child’s praying if it is spontaneous, but do NOT transcribe rote prayers, such as the Lord’s Prayer. Whenever you transcribe any kind of praying, put a p in the key column. Put three dashes --- in the utts column for rote prayers, and transcribe spontaneous prayers in the utts column.
Do NOT transcribe coughing, sneezing, nonsensical/preverbal babbling or random screaming. When you come across such noises, don’t put anything in the utts column at all.
Indicate coughing, sneezing, babbling and random screaming only in the context column and only if pertinent to the conversation.
Distinguishing non-verbal babbling from real but unintelligible words is not always a straightforward process. When unsure if a child is babbling or attempting real words, err on the side of transcribing ### instead of nothing at all, (see Section 7 for a discussion of the ### symbol) unless you’re pretty sure there are no real words in the stream of sounds. Typically, just babies engage in pre-verbal babbling, but occasionally an older child who is a slow talker will also produce pre-linguistic babbling.
Do NOT transcribe the PCG’s imitations of child babbling or nonsense noises. Again, put nothing at all in the utts column when the PCG does this.
Do NOT transcribe rhythmic/ritualized game-play and singing from either PCG or child. This speech is memorized and not spontaneous, and so it does not get transcribed. Instead, put dashes --- in the p_utts or c_utts column and a v in the key column.
Put the name of the song in the context column in the same row as the v key code and dashes ---. There are people who are interested in spatial and number-oriented language, as well as people interested in things like the alphabet, etc., and many songs have spatial, number, and alphabet-oriented content.
DO transcribe spontaneously made-up songs and novel lyrics to existing melodies and mark it with a v in the key column.
If a person is mixing novel words in with the real words of a song, determine whether the person is just replacing a few single words with different words. If they are, transcribe dashes --- in the utts column and a v in the key column. If, on the other hand, the person changes more than half the words in the song, this is spontaneous enough that you would want to transcribe what they sing. So if a person sings “Yankee Doodle went to town, riding on a scooter...” that’s only a one-word substitution and you wouldn’t transcribe this. But if they sing “A wet noodle made me frown...” or “Yankee Doodle fried a clown” you would transcribe this because more than half of the words are different.
If you end up with multiple codes or code units (consisting of M, F, or * followed by another code) in the key column, sort them alphabetically, putting a space after each code or code unit. Each individual key code attributed to the father must have the F code immediately before it without a space (e.g. F*, Fr). If there is more than one sibling, indicate the sibling number immediately after the * symbol without a space (e.g. *2, *13). These two codes can also be combined without spaces (e.g. F*123). All the rules for the F code also apply for the M code used for the mother’s speech during literacy visits.
Although we do not transcribe the speech of other adults and children in the house, if you hear any speech that does not get transcribed (i.e. non-PCG or C speech or speech that requires --- in the utts columns), indicate it at the next time point divisible by 5 (e.g. 0:10:00, 0:55:00) with a timestamp, an x or xc in the key column, and a description of who was talking in the context column. The x is for speech that is not directed towards the child, and the xc is for speech that is directed towards the child. If both types of speech occur, make two extra rows on your spreadsheet with an x in one of them and an xc in the other. Each row then gets a timestamp.
| time | key | p_utts | c_utts | context |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0:45:00 | x | M talks to pizza delivery man | ||
| 0:45:00 | xc | Older brother plays with C |