The study aims to formulate principles for developing a linguistic information system meant to act as integrated representation of linguistic resources. Scientific originality of the research is in that principles of universality and complementarity of a linguistic information system development are suggested for the first time. Universality is understood as supporting all kinds of research including theoretical, applied and informational. Complementarity refers to adequate allocation of electronic resources functioning as system components. Such types of complementarity as semantic, pragmatic and functional are identified. The results of the study have demonstrated that the system structure must include linguistic ontology and a national corpus as its core elements.