Finding out what reflexive forms appear in Adam's speech does not necessarily show Adam's grammar of reflexives. Consider the following sentences:

1. John said that Mary hurt herself.
2. Mary said that John hurt herself.
3. Mary said that she hurt John.
4. Mary said that herself hurt John.

Adult grammar allows only certain positions for reflexives;  adult grammar allows the utterances in (1) and (3) but disallows the utterances in (2) and (4). To establish a child's grammar, researchers need access to the complete utterances of the child. Additionally, they need the context of the utterances to determine what the child communicates.

Therefore, use the CLAN program KWAL to search for key words and return the utterance. Rather than searching for only one word at a time, use a file on the a: drive. In the file, type the following reflexive forms, which Adam actually uses (the results of CHILDES Data Example Study 1):

dierselves
demselves
herself
himself
hisself
itself
myself
self
selfs
selves
yourselves

Use switches to perform searches only on Adam's utterances (+t*ADA) and to pool the output into one file (+u). Also, direct KWAL to search all of Adam's files at once (adam*.cha) and to place the output into a file on the a: drive. Name this file "rflxv.syn" to represent "reflexive syntax." Combining these components yields the following command:

kwal +s@a:\rflxv.lst +t*ADA +u adam*.cha >a:\rflxv.syn

The command locates all of Adam's utterances containing one of his reflexives, but it does not include the context of these utterances. So add a switch to expand the window three utterances before the target utterance and three utterances afterwards: "-w3" and "+w3" respectively.  Adding this switch yields the following command:

kwal +s@a:\rflxv.lst +t*ADA -w3 +w3 +u adam*.cha >a:\rflxv.syn 

The result (too long to include on this page) shows all of Adam's utterances that include one of his reflexives along with a context of material both before and after each utterance. This information can help a researcher establish Adam's exact grammar of reflexives. The following is an example of one of these context utterances:

*ADA: then buy another one.
*ADA: so much rings.
*URS: what?
*ADA: I've got so much rings.
*ADA: hey # you gon (t)a make your own self a ring?
*URS: shall I?
*URS: what color?
*ADA: see if I got any green.
*ADA: I got green.