Computerized Profiling

Page last modified: November 22, 2003

CP Program Information

What is CP?

Computerized Profiling (CP) is a set of programs designed to help you learn and carry out a broad range of language analysis procedures. CP and all add-ons to CP are freeware and can be downloaded, used and distributed without restriction.

CP can be used to analyze both language samples transcribed orthographically and phonological samples transcribed phonetically. The following analyses are available in CP:

Corpus

• Utterance count, showing number of P (child) and T (adult or other conversational partner) sentences, number of different sentence types, number of complete and intelligible sentences
• Index of utterances produced, showing syntactic productivity at the utterance level
• Concordance of words used

Semantics

• Profile In Semantics-Lexical (PRISM-L, Crystal, 1982), a highly detailed lexical analysis based upon the concept of semantic fields.
• Analysis of Propositions (APRON, based on Johnston & Kamhi, 1984; Kamhi & Johnston, 1992; Lahey, 1988) an analysis of the propositional content of children's utterances.
• Early Vocabularies (based on Nelson, 1973), a simplified lexical analysis that allows for a meaningful evaluation of the productions of children in the single word and early multi-word stages of production.

Grammar

• Language Assessment, Remediation, and Screening Procedure (LARSP, Crystal, Fletcher, and Garman, 1989), an age- and stage-related system for profiling children's syntactic and, to some extent, discourse development.
• Index of Productive Syntax (IPSyn, Scarborough, 1990), a method for evaluating and quantifying the grammatical complexity of young children's spontaneous language samples. IPSyn is based upon the grammatical categories and developmental scheme of Assigning Structural Stage (Miller, 1981).
• Developmental Sentence Scoring (DSS, Lee, 1974), a procedure for measuring the grammatical and, to some extent, lexical complexity of a spontaneous language sample.
• Black English Sentence Scoring (BESS, Nelson, 1998; Nelson & Hyter, 1990), an adaptation of DSS for use with speakers of African American Vernacular English.

Phonology

• Profile of Phonology (PROPH, based on Crystal, 1982; Grunwell, 1987; Ingram, 1981; Ingram & Ingram, 2001; Paul & Jennings, 1992; Shriberg & Kwiatkowski, 1982; Smit, Hand, Freilinger, Bernthal, & Bird, 1990), a comprehensive phonological analysis that includes structural statistics, variability/homonymy analysis, independent and relational analyses of word shapes, stress patterns, vowels and consonants, Syllable Structural Level, Percentage Consonants Correct (PCC), phoneme age of mastery, Phonological Mean Length of Utterance (PMLU), Proportion of Whole Word Proximity (PWP) and phonological process analysis.
• Profile of Prosody (PROP, Crystal, 1982), a procedure for analyzing intonation patterns and their relationship to grammatical structure.

Pragmatics

• Conversational Acts Profile (CAP, Fey, 1986), an assessment of the conversational acts of a child and his or her conversational partner and their role in the ongoing discourse.

Narrative

• Narrative Analysis Procedure (NAP, based on Halliday and Hasan, 1976, as modified by Halldorson, 1993), an assessment of the appropriate use of cohesion devices in narrative samples.

Utilities

In addition to these core analyses, CP includes utilities that allow you to:

• compare two transcriptions of the same sample or two analyses of the same transcript for grading or reliability purposes
• search through completed data files for examples of particular constituent structures, e.g., SVO clauses, CVC word shapes, or Possessor-Possession utterances
• edit dictionaries and other data files used by the program when it parses syntactic structures, looks up phonetic forms, classifies lexical items, etc.
• practice coding for a language analysis procedure you are trying to master by comparing your entries to a data file created by an experienced coder
• carry out various supplementary analyses that require no further coding but can help illuminate trends in the data