Building a lexical database with multiple outputs: examples from legacy data and from multimodal fieldwork

Abstract

The creation of reusable lexical database files, based in fieldwork or arising from historical research, benefits from conformance to established standards which then greatly increases the enduring usability of the lexicon, and its later ability to link to external objects, including media. All linguistic analysis benefits from the close relationship between primary recordings and a textual corpus, but a dictionary can also benefit from links to media in the use of playable example sentences and citation forms of headwords. In this paper several examples will be used to illustrate that not all linguists want to deal with the tools required to take advantage of these methods, so, in some cases, they are better off seeking advice and assistance in advance of building the database or in its later conversion to output formats.