Project DOC: its Methodological Basis

Dictionary on Computer~ hereafter DOC, is part of an overall effort to harness an on-line computer for phono-logical research. For certain problems the linguist finds it necessary to organize large amounts of data, or to perform rather involved logical tasks-such as checking out a body of rules with intricate ordering relations. In these situations a computer can be invaluable in that it forces the linguist to think through his problems with great precision and in that it can do certain jobs with a speed and accuracy not otherwise possible. The overt aim of DOC is to reconstruct the phono-logical histories of the major Chinese dialects. At a deeper level our interest is to find out more about how phonological structures changein general and the relation between these changes and the synchronic systems they lead to. To achieve these objectives we must attempt to account for oceans of data (the regular and irregular developments of thousands of morphemes in dozens of dialects). The hypotheses we posit, i.e., the reconstructed forms and the associated rules~ are likewise numerous and complex. The project is further complicated by the tens