Section II

This article reports on a ‘rapid application development’ or RAD process to construct a research database in entry-level commercial database software, in this case FileMaker Pro. The database was required for a sign linguistic investigation into the morphology of the productive lexicon of British Sign Language (cf. Brennan’s article in this volume).

Although at an early stage of development, the productive lexicon database (PLD) is an open and modifiable set of loosely-linked data files which can be reconfigured and remodelled according to user requirements, research aims or commercial objectives. The example offered is that of a trilingual sign/spoken language dictionary.

The PLD’s flexible data model allows, as a matter of principle, for the combination of datasets irrespective of linguistic conventions used for data description. It is suggested that data models of this kind therefore open opportunities for research collaboration and commercial exploitation without necessitating detailed prior agreement on linguistic data description conventions or standards.