Linguistic knowledge as a background component of an application oriented workstation

Abstract

Full text systems seem often to be the cheapest way of introducing computer based methods into historical research, as, at least at first glance, the almost completely abolish the necessity for coding. It is quite frequently discovered, however, that this easy way of starting a project has to be paid for later, when the uncoded natural language makes it difficult to base results upon broad and well defined categories. Research is described which foucuses upon the introduction of formalized approaches, borrowed from linguistics. Such approaches could ultimately make the plain text, transcribed from a source, much more useful. The emphasis is put upon a concise introduction of the linguistic concepts necessary. These goals are accomplished by defining the classes of knowledge a computing environment needs to process medieval texts, as occuring in charters with a minimum of explicite coding provided.