get_tokens: Empty actual_phonology and model_phonology columns

[allysonappleton]

I wanted to report an issue I encountered while using the get_tokens function in R. I am currently working on investigating words spoken by the target child, D23, in the Penney corpus. Specifically, I am interested in comparing the child's pronunciation (actual_phonology) with the correct pronunciation (model_phonology) of the words. To do this, I have been referring to the CHILDES transcript located at: https://sla.talkbank.org/TBB/phon/Eng-NA/Penney/Narrative/D23.cha.

As an example, when I run the code pond <- get_tokens(corpus = 'Penney', target_child = 'D23', token = "pond") in R, I noticed that both the actual_phonology and model_phonology columns are empty. This is surprising because the phonology information is clearly present in the CHILDES transcript itself. For example, in the linked transcript, the word "pond" shows both the child's pronunciation "pɑntʰ" and its model phonology "pɑnd" in the %xpho and %xmod tiers. But when I retrieve the tokens using the code mentioned above, the actual_phonology and model_phonology columns are not populated.

Interestingly, I observed that some words, like "is", do have their phonology listed. When using the code is <- get_tokens(corpus = 'Penney', target_child = 'D23', token = "is"), I was able to see that there are 6 tokens of the word "is", but only one of the tokens had its phonology listed - which is odd.

I wanted to bring this issue to your attention as it is impacting my analysis. I am also wondering if this issue is specific to this corpus or not, so I will keep investigating. If there are any alternative solutions or workarounds you can suggest, I would greatly appreciate it!