The most general declarative perspective on a spoken language lexicon which is required for lexicon acquisition is that of the ``omniscient lexicographer'': the lexicographer ``knows'', in principle, all the possible categories and relations which may hold between a sign, its meaning and pronunciation, and other signs; all properties of a sign have equal status in terms of possible access. This idealised view, while useful for general lexical databases , is not appropriate for the construction of more specialised spoken language lexica for the classical types of spoken language system , unless these are derived from a more general lexical database as sublexica.