This corpus of the Qaqet language 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 and Kamanakam. 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 study 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.

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