Computer-Assisted Linguistic Analysis

Abstract

Linguistic analysis depends on a variety of highly structured arrangements of textual and lexical data. These same materials also serve as input to the Inflectional Analysis Package which tests linguistic rules against a large body of spontaneously recorded data. In addition to file processing and rule testing, the identification of new stems and affixes leads to a substantive improvement of the original files. At the same time, the analytic programs may be regarded as a model of morphological analysis. In describing the Cree Project, this report also provides an outline for more detailed or more technical discussions which will appear at a later date; it also intends to present a specific example of computer applications within a relatively small-scale project. A user's guide which makes the programs accessible to other scholars is included as an appendix.