Methods: Using Wordbank for language development research
Using Wordbank for language development research & Understanding Children’s Language Learning: A “Bigger Data” Approach
In this workshop by Alvin Wei Ming Tan and Michael C. Frank, we will examine early language development using the Wordbank database. Wordbank is a site for archiving, sharing, and exploring anonymized MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDIs) data from the original English form and from CDI adaptations in many languages (such as Croatian, Danish, English, German, Italian, Norwegian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish).
We start with a practical portion, we'll use R and the wordbankr package to download data and explore how to create reproducible pipelines with Wordbank data. We will then reproduce analyses of the relationship between grammar and the lexicon (originally from Bates & Goodman, 1997). We'll end with a research talk on some uses of Wordbank, including connections with corpus data from CHILDES.
No previous knowledge of Wordbank is required, but some knowledge of R will be helpful in the practical portion.
The workshop and the talk combined will take about 3 hours in total.
When? 24 October 2023 14:00 BST/ 15:00 CEST/ 16:00 EEST
Where? This is a hybrid event that will take place both online on Zoom and at the Max Planck Institute in Nijmegen in room 163.
Schedule
| 14:45 CEST | Walk-in with coffee and tea |
| 15:00 CEST | Workshop Alvin Tan: Using Wordbank for language development research |
| 16:50 CEST | Short coffee break |
| 17:05 CEST | Lecture Michael C. Frank: Understanding Children’s Language Learning: A “Bigger Data” Approach |
| 18:00 CEST | Closing |
NOTE: This is a satellite workshop to the Many Paths to Language conference. If you already registered for this workshop through the MPaL registration form, you don't need to register again.
Schedule (CEST time zone):
About the instructors
Alvin Wei Ming Tan is a PhD Candidate at Stanford University,
researching language learning in young children.
Michael C. Frank is Professor of Human Biology at Stanford University
and the Principle Investigator at the Language & Cognition lab.
Learn more about their research here!
Resources
The materials used in this workshop can be found in OSF.