ABSTRACT
The progress made in the last decade toward harnessing the power of electronic computers as a tool for the ordinary working linguist (OWL) has been phenomenal. As the eighties dawned, virtually no OWLs were using computers, but the personal computer revolution was just beginning and it was possible to foresee its impact on our discipline (Simons, 1980). Now, more than fifteen years later, the personal computer is commonplace; battery-powered laptops have even made computing a routine part of life for the field linguist. But despite widespread success at getting hardware into the hands of linguists, we have fallen short of realizing the full potential of computing for the OWL. Why is this? Because commercial software does not meet all the requirements of the linguist, and the linguistic community has not yet been able to develop all the software that will fill the gap.
