This paper analyzes the structure and meaning of text elements cross-linguistically and discusses how that information can be elicited from people in a way that is directly useful for NLP applications. The authors describe a recently developed computer-based linguistic knowledge elicitation system that initiates a new paradigm of knowledge acquisition methodologies for NLP. In particular, the article describes the natural language phenomena the system seeks to cover, the approach to knowledge elicitation and its rationale, the elicitation modules themselves, and broader implications of this work.