Tools

The LinguaLinks Linguistics workshop contains most of the language data management "tools" found in LinguaLinks. Just as carpenters or mechanics have workshops with tools and supplies to do their work, the LinguaLinks Linguistics workshop provides language workers with tools and resources to manage and analyze the language data they collect.

LinguaLinks contains these Linguistics workshops:

• Grammar workshop: Word analysis tools for use with texts
• Lexicon workshop: Lexical database management tools
• Phonology: Prototype of tools for phonological analysis

These workshops are organized and linked together to provide

• automation of many routine tasks
• multiple views of your data
• hypertext linking of data elements

The LinguaLinks Linguistics workshops provide tools to

• analyze and document the relationships among semantic concepts in the language
• collect, manage, analyze, and publish interlinearized texts
• manage lexical data and publish a dictionary
• perform a phonemic analysis on a corpus of phonetic data

Data models

The data models in the knowledge base make the tools linguistically "aware" in a unique way. This "awareness" may be seen in small part in data-entry-and-analysis dialogs that

• suggest the kinds of data and decisions required for completeness
• provide context-sensitive links to reference material
• offer the ability to simultaneously display and edit in multiple languages.

The data models are as theory neutral as possible.

Links

As the name "LinguaLinks" suggests, the program structure uses links between the data objects to keep you aware of analytical decisions you have made and need to make. The links also facilitate

• semi-automatic entry of data, such as example sentences in the lexical database
• automatic updating of edited data in all views

As you work with the linguistic tools, these features help you

• enter and categorize data consistently
• stay focused on important analytical decisions

Help for using tools

LinguaLinks supports its Linguistics workshops tools with comprehensive context-sensitive help in a Windows Help file.

The tools are integrated with help modules that define concepts, give procedures to follow, or offer useful background information. These modules are organized into books with the following titles:

• Doing language research
• Collecting language data
• Interlinearizing texts
• Building a lexical database
• Analyzing semantics
• Analyzing phonology
• A glossary of linguistic terms

Other resources

• Character sets and fonts

In addition, the LinguaLinks Linguistics bookshelf is easily accessible from within the Linguistics workshops.

Each major Linguistic application now has at least one "screen movie" tutorial which shows and describes how to use the application.

LinguaLinks home page SIL home page