Project DOC 
Dictionary On Computer, hereafter DOC, is part of an overall effort 
to harness an on-line computer for phonological 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 is invaluable, for it forces the linguist to analyze his problems 
with greater precision and it executes certain Jobs with a speed and 
accuracy not otherwise possible. 
The overt aim of DOC is the reconstruction of the phonological 
histories of the major Chinese dialects. ~ a deeper level, our interest is 
to learn more about how phonological structures change in general and 
about the relation between these changes and the synchronic systems they 
lead to. The achievement of this understanding is crucial for the formu- 
lation of a general theory of linguistic change. 
Of the many language families in the world, Chinese offers an ideal 
laboratory within which to study phonological change, due both to its 
unrivaled wealth of materials and to its distinctive phonology and 
orthography. Thus it affords both the time depth of philological docu- 
mentation and the spatial wealth ofall the dialects. Since modern 
linguistics was born in the hands of the Indo-Europeanists during the 
last century, our conception of how language changes and how it patterns 
has been excessively dominated by Indo-EurOpean studies. Analyzing a 
language family with a very different structure car, help us balance 
this skewed perspective. 
The challenge of ~onetic explanations, however, can only be 
met when a sufficient fund of information is available, enabling phonology 
to make the exciting transition from a descriptive effort into an 
explanatory science. DOC is designed to facilitate the gathering of 
this fund of information. In this paper, I will describe the actual 
organization of the DOC data and the methodology involved in applying it. 
William S-Y. Wang 
Department of Linguistics 
University of California, Berkeley 
Berkeley, California 94720 
