Internet Grammars and Searching

[Anthony Aristar]

Like so many other people, I think the idea of collecting grammars in
electronic versions and placing them on the Internet is a very good
one.  The idea is so good, in fact, that we at LINGUIST would be
very happy to help all we can.  We can certainly offer you space on
one or more of the LINGUIST machines if you need it.

But I feel that I should make one comment here about the question of
whether there's any need to have the material collected at one site.
This is something the LINGUIST crew have throught about quite a bit,
since we've been in process of collecting Internet data of all kinds
for a while.

The idea of having material scattered across the Internet is a very
appealing one.  It means that many people can share in the project,
and it means that no one has to find a large amount of space in one
place.

But it has one huge drawback.  While in theory it's possible to search
data across the Internet--after all, that's what Internet search
engines do--in practice it's very difficult to do effectively and
inexpensively when you're dealing with the needs of a specialized
discipline like linguistics. And one thing you absolutely cannot do is
to search in real time: it just takes too long.

If ALT chooses to go with multiple sites, expect to spend a lot of
money and time making it work properly.  It's simply much easier if
you collect everything in one place.  And being able to search the
data effectively is absolutely essential if you wish to make such a
project work.


Anthony

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Anthony Aristar                         Associate Professor
Moderator, LINGUIST                     aristar at linguistlist.org
Linguistics Program                     Fax:   (409) 862 2292
Dept. of English                        Phone: (409) 779 8509
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX 77843-4227

URL: http://linguist.tamu.edu/pers/fac/aristar/
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