Representing and Rendering Linguistic Paradigms

Linguistic forms are inherently multi-dimensional. They exhibit a variety of phonological, orthographic, morphosyntactic, semantic and pragmatic properties. Accordingly, linguistic analysis involves multidimensional exploration, a process in which the same collection of forms is laid out in many ways until clear patterns emerge. Equally, language documentation usually contains tabulations of linguistic forms to illustrate systematic patterns and variations. In all such cases, multi-dimensional data is projected onto a two-dimensional table known as a linguistic paradigm, the most widespread format for linguistic data presentation. In this paper we develop an XML data model for linguistic paradigms, and show how XSL transforms can render them. We describe a high-level interface which gives linguists flexible, high-level control of paradigm layout. The work provides a simple, general, and extensible model for the preservation and access of linguistic data.