At the outset of the project, we were faced with having to represent the symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet using an ordinary typewriter keyboard. This makes an enormous list and accounts to some degree for the slowness with which the program runs. Each grammar is kept in a separate file, which is named after the language . The naming convention for the language grammar files allows us to recall them using any of several fields. It is possible to enquire about structures, specific sounds, sounds with a given feature, or any combination of the above.
None has an obligatory null onset.
We have not yet adequately confronted the details of phonotaxis, though the broad generalisations are in place. It will be possible to include constraints in the grammars to filter out false hits. We are somewhat hampered in less well-known languages by lack of information about which sequences do not occur. We hope to improve our ability to specify co-occurrence restrictions within the syllable, though this is necessary for only a fairly small subset of the languages included. The problems we confront at the moment seem more related to implementation than to content.