Closing the Gap: Data Models for Documentary Linguistics

This document discusses challenges in managing linguistic data electronically and proposes formal data encoding models. It notes the increasing amounts of linguistic data from fieldwork and issues with disparate encoding formats. Recently developed models address lexicons, interlinear texts, paradigms, syntactic trees, and annotation standards. These new models enable new types of data exploration and manipulation while reducing barriers to use. They may affect linguistic analysis by making some types easier and discovering new possibilities and challenges.