Qaqet child language corpus : longitudinal study

This dataset of the Qaqet language (ISO 639-3 byx, Glottolog qaqe1238) of Papua New Guinea was compiled as part of the project ‘Psycholinguistics and Language Documentation’ (2014-2022), generously funded by the Lichtenberg Program of the Volkswagen Foundation. Our project studies language acquisition and socialization among the Qaqet of Raunsepna (-4.43, 151.79) and Kamanakam (-4.35, 151.88). Children in Raunsepna grow up with Qaqet as their dominant language (with the national language Tok Pisin playing a minor role), while children in Kamanakam grow up in a highly multilingual environment (with Tok Pisin playing a prominent role early on). The heart of the project is a longitudinal corpus of a number of focal children (between the ages of 2 and 4) and their older and younger siblings. Families videotaped their children, aiming for one hour each week over a period of at least one year. The goal was to record children in their typical day-to-day activities, and to thus gain an idea of their language environment and development over time. Due to the sensitive nature of child data, the data is not openly available, but it can be made available for research purposes upon request. For information, contact Birgit Hellwig (https://ifl.phil-fak.uni-koeln.de/prof-hellwig). For an overview of the corpus structure, visit our corpus site (https://qaqet.phil-fak.uni-koeln.de/corpus). For information on the project and the language, visit our project site (https://qaqet.phil-fak.uni-koeln.de/).