An Arabic morphological analyzer-synthesizer

Abstract EN

Morphology is an essential element in processing natural language.

As morphology in Arabic is highly derivational, morphological analysis/synthesis is systematic and can be easily automated.

The objective of this research work is to design and implement a morphological analyzer/synthesizer (MAS) for Arabic.

In analysis mode, given a word, MAS determines the following properties of words: 1) type (noun, verb, article), 2) person, number and gender (for verbs and nouns), 3) tense of verb (past, present, imperative), 4) type of article (interrogative, prepositional, etc.), 5) root, and derivation (for verbs and nouns), and 6) type and identity of affixes (prefix, infix, suffix).

In synthesis mode, the above properties are given and the corresponding word is constructed.

MAS is based on linguistic principles of Arabic morphology.

It is designed as three modules for particles, nouns and verbs respectively.

The modules consist of rules that encode the linguistic principles of word construction in Arabic.

The mode (analysis or synthesis) of operation is automatically determined by the values associated with the word and its properties.

For a word of size n of a particular type (noun, verb or article), the possible derivations (determined according to the linguistic principles) are implemented as ordered (according to their frequencies of occurrence) Prolog predicates.

The size of the word and frequency of occurrence of the corresponding derivation are used to minimize the search time.

MAS is currently being used as a component of a natural Arabic understanding system.

It can also be used in translation, computeraided Arabic learning, character recognition and text and speech processing systems.