The relationship between the disciplines of linguistics and information science has not yet been studied in depth. We must assess the state of our knowledge of natural language and determine how this knowledge is applicable within the context of an information system. The concept of a natural language information system can be specified in terms of the four components of acquisition, content analysis and representation, data management and information utilization. Morphology provides information science with its safest entree into the exploration of natural language. Systems have also been set up for syntactic and semantic analysis and for combining the two. The most solid achievements in computational linguistics involve syntax. The construction of a natural language information system clearly is not a trivial undertaking, for we are attempting to build a device for "understanding" natural language text before we fully understand natural language. It must be a joint attack made by linguists and information scientists. The common interest of both linguists and automated language processing specialists in natural language could offset their divergent analytical approaches and make them aware of the necessity of mutual cooperation in language processing projects. It appears that information science has gone about as far as it can go without linguistics, and vice versa. (CFM)