Automatic processing of texts always starts from simple words taken as the basic units that compose documents. Simple words are the natural point of departure for analysis because of the high degree of formalization that has been introduceed in the writing and description of European languages. A cumulative project for electronic lexicons Linguistic theory is certainly better founded than any other human and social science. Methods and basic concepts have been developed across languages and they can now be applied to the systematic description of languages. However, large-scale descriptive tasks have not been undertaken yet, and for various reasons, ranging from conflicts of interest between theoreticians and dictionary publishers to the immense size of the task.
All descriptions published so far differ to some extent.
The consensus is not only theoretical, but empirical as well. After more than five years of parallel experimental work on six languages, working principles have been arrived at that can be extrapolated to other languages and to other phenomena.