Excluding Basque data

[Larry Trask]

On Mon, 20 Sep 1999 ECOLING at aol.com wrote:

> My point in this discussion has been that
> with the convenience of modern computers,
> WE DO NOT HAVE TO DECIDE EARLY
> in any sense that constrains us from changing our
> decision later in a "what if" exploration!

> In other words, by TAGGING our data with
> its various attestations and properties, we can
> encode everything that Larry Trask wants,
> and still be able to consider a wider range of
> data if we want to do so, not merely what Jon Patrick
> wants to include, but any other set of choices as well.

> We can tabulate statistics from the same database,
> now using one set of criteria, now another,
> to see what the effect is on the patterns we observe.
> We actually have a chance to analyze whether we
> think some set of criteria such as Larry Trask's
> have some definitial or implicational relation with
> particular canonical forms, and indeed even with the
> degree of uniformity of canonical forms within
> the set of data included in any one use of the database.

> Because of this flexibility provided by databases with
> tagged data, we can avoid any need to debate methodology
> as some PRIOR step, because we can explore different
> methodologies on the fly, whenever we feel like it.

> Then more efforts will go into actual discoveries,
> and less into the kinds of meta-discussions we have had here.

A database, and especially a tagged database, is indeed a valuable tool.
And I agree that it possesses a good deal of potential flexibility.

However, a database just sits there and does nothing until we tell a
program to do something with it.  For the kind of study I have in mind,
that means telling the program to include or exclude entries meeting
certain criteria selected by the investigator -- just as I proposed in
the first place.

Hence, while the compiling of the database may require no initial
methodology, manipulating it certainly does require some initial
decisions.  So I don't see how working with a database, instead of with
paper, gets around the central issue we have been discussing: the choice
of criteria for proceeding.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk