Abstract
This paper discusses one of the tools which may be used for representing texts in machine-readable form, i.e. encoding systems or markup languages. This discussion is at the same time a report on current tendencies in the field. An attempt is made at reconstructing some of the main conceptions of text lying behind these tendencies. It is argued that, although the conceptions of texts and text structures inherent in these tendencies seem to be misguided, text encoding is nevertheless a fruitful approach to the study of texts. Finally, some conclusions are drawn concerning the relevance of this discussion to themes in text linguistics.
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Claus Huitfeldt studied philosophy at the University of Trondheim, writing his dissertation on the nature of transcendental arguments. He then worked for several years at the Norwegian Computing Centre for the Humanities, at the Norwegian Wittgenstein Project, and as Research Fellow in philosophy, before becoming Director of the Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen. He has published a number of papers on text encoding.
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Huitfeldt, C. Multi-dimensional texts in a one-dimensional medium. Comput Hum 28, 235–241 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01830270
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01830270