Using
Computers
in
Linguistics:
A Practical Guide

Chapter 1

The Nature of Linguistic Data and the Requirements of a Computing Environment for Linguistic Research

Gary F. Simons
Summer Institute of Linguistics

Online Appendix

Summary

Multilingual Computing

Text Encoding

Databases

The Nature of Linguistic Data

This web page accompanies the chapter on "The Nature of Linguistic Data and the Requirements of a Computing Environment for Linguistic Research" in Using Computers in Linguistics: A Practical Guide. This chapter enumerates some of the fundamental characteristics of linguistic data, and then describes the requirements of a computing environment for linguistic research that are implied by these characteristics.

This online appendix offers a summary of the six requirements that are developed, and then offers pointers to resources on the major technologies that are discussed in the paper. These are:

• Multilingual computing and the problem of character encoding and rendering
• Using text encoding to represent linguistic data
• Using databases to represent linguistic data

Comments are welcomed, especially pointers to additional information resources that should be added. You may contact me at gary_simons@sil.org.