REPRESENTATION OF ARABIC WORDS

An Approach Towards Probabilistic Root-Pattern Relationships

Bassam Haddad

Faculty of Information Technology, Department of Computer Science, University of Petra, P.O.BOX 3034, Amman, Jordan

Keywords: Arabic NLP, Morphological Analysis, Root-Pattern Analysis, Statistical Language Model.

Abstract: In the traditional Arabic NLP a root-pattern relationship has generally been considered as a simple

relationship, whereas the potential aspect of considering it as a statistical measure has extensively been

neglected and even never formally considered. This paper attempts therefore to explore some issues

involved in considering the classical phenomenon of Arabic root-pattern relationships as probabilistic

measures. Some novel probabilistic measures in the context of Arabic NLP will be introduced with respect

of their semantic potential as uncertain relations capturing some root related Arabic word-forms

probabilistically.

1 INTRODUCTION

Arabic morphology corresponds to a singular class

of morphological systems. It exhibits clear non-

concatenative features; whereas manipulating the

root letters is decisive for forming the majority of

Arabic words. Roots represent the highest level of

abstraction for a word basic meaning. Words can be

morphologically classified into three classes of lexi-

cal words: Basic Derivative, Rigid (Non-Deriva-

tive) and Arabized Arabic Words (Haddad B.,

2007).

Basic

Derivative Arabic Words form the over-

whelming majority of the Arabic lexical vocabulary.

Most of these words can be generated from a tem-

platic

tri-literal root (/ﻞﻌﻓ/, f‘l) or the quadri-literal

root (/ﻞﻠﻌﻓ/,

f‘ll) by adding consistent prefixes and

suffixes or filling vowels in a predetermined pattern

form. Non-Derivative words include the lexical

non-inflectional word types such as pronouns, ad-

verbs, particles besides stem words, which cannot

be reduced to a known root, whereas Arabized Ba-

sic Words consist of words without Arabic origin

such as (/ﺖ�ﱰ�ﺍ/, Internet). Arabized Basic Words,

and Non-Derivative Words, do not linguistically

exhibit a clear root-pattern relationship. This paper

will focus the research interest on Basic Derivative

Words and their semantic potential towards building

novel probabilistic measures providing Arabic NLP

with statistical measures. Furthermore, this paper

will attempt to present formal description of these

measures in the context of their applications in Ara-

bic NLP, such as supporting morphological analysis,

word-sense disambiguation, Non-Word detection

and correction, information retrieval and others.

1.1 Related Research

The status of research on computational Arabic is

limited compared to European languages, which

have benefited from the broad research in this field.

For the last decades, concentration on Arabic Lan-

guage Processing has been focused on the symbolic

methods, whereas the most effort has been focused

extensively on morphological analysis (Beesley,

2001; Dichy and Farghaly, 2003; and many others),

moderate on syntax (Ditters, 2001; Shaalan, 2005;

and others) and relatively poor on semantic

(Haddad B., 2007).

In the meanwhile, there are some attempts de-

voted to statistical methods utilizing traditional sto-

chastic language models such as HMM, Bayes

Theorem and N-Gram Analysis in word-sense

disambiguation, Arabic diacritization, Part of

speech tagging (Yaseen et Al., 2006), Machine

translation (Shafer and Yarowsky, 2003) and oth-

ers.

This paper is proceeding from the concept of

root-pattern analysis as characteristic feature for

147

Haddad B. (2009).

REPRESENTATION OF ARABIC WORDS - An Approach Towards Probabilistic Root-Pattern Relationships.

In Proceedings of the International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Ontology Development, pages 147-152

DOI: 10.5220/0002287101470152

 SciTePress

representing the majority of Arabic words,

whereas the major research contribution of this pa-

per lies in extending the classical view of such as-

pect from simple lexical root-pattern relationship to

binary uncertain rule expressing predictive val-

ues based on analysis of frequency of occurrence.

In this context these root-pattern and pattern-root

probabilistic relations correspond to the point-

valued binary fuzzy relation representing

associative medical relationships (Haddad, 2002).

Furthermore, this paper proposes to rewrite

some controversial basic concepts, form proce-

dural or functional point of view; whereas it is to

hope that such formal concepts might serve as a

possible source for finding formal standard de-

scriptions of the divisive notations and descriptions

found in literature of the Arabic computational

community.

2 GENERATING BASIC WORDS

In this paper the focus of attention is the class of

derivative words, which represent the major class

of the Arabic word system. In the following some

preliminary and basic notation are introduced:

The set of all Arabic roots and patterns will be

represented by R and P

receptively :

= {r

,...,r

} ,

{

,...,

}

(1)

Let furthermore Θ

root

be a root substitution

replacing the root letters with letters occurring in a

pattern.

Definition 1 (Templatic Root-Pattern Substitution).

Let (ﻑ

, f

(ﻉ

, ،

) and (ﻝ

, l

) be the tem-

platic root literals and pt

∈ P

containing the

templatic root literals, then a templatic root-

pattern substitution is defined as

root

= {(ﻑ

, f

)/(

ﻑ

, f

),(

ﻉ

,،

)/(

ﻉ

, ،

(ﻝ

)/(ﻝ

) }

(2)

(See transcription in Appendix A)

Definition 2 (Instantiation a Templatic Root-Pattern

Relationship).

Let r

∈ R and pt

∈ PT

then a basic word can

be generated by application a templatic root-

pattern substitution “

Θroot “ to the pattern pt

roo

(ri)

(3)

Most Arabic words can be generated from the

templatic tri-literal root (/ﻞﻌﻓ/, f‘l) or the quadri-

literal root (/ﻞﻠﻌﻓ/, f‘ll). On the other hand, for each

valid Arabic root, r

, there is a certain number of

consistent patterns, pt

, with which a root can be

instantiated. Therefore, a lexical derivative Arabic

word can be understood as a result of applying a

substitution of a root literal with the corresponding

consistent pattern literals. Such a substitution can be

regarded as a transformation operation of a root

into a pattern word or an instantiation of template

with root letters.

Example:

Let (/ ﻓﺎﻞﻋ /,

fā‘il) , (/ ﹶﻣﻝﻮﻌﻔ /, maf‘ūl) be patterns ∈ P

and

(/ﺐﺘﻛ /, ktb,

Writing) ∈ R, then the application of the

templatic root substitution to the patterns (/ ﻓﺎﻞﻋ /,

fā‘il) and (/ ﹶﻣﻝﻮﻌﻔ /, maf‘ūl) generates the following

words respectively:

(/ ﻓﺎﹺﻋﻞ /,

fā‘il) Θ

root

(/ﺐﺘﻛ /, ktb, Writing) =

(/ ﻛﺎﺐﺗ /,

kātib, Writer).

(/ﻝﻮﻌﻔﹶﻣ/,

maf‘ūl)Θ

root

(/ﺐﺘﻛ /, ktb, Writing ) =

(/ ﺏﻮﺘﻜﻣ /,

maktūb, Letter).

The generated words are still basic words and rep-

resent basic stem words without considering mor-

pho-syntactic and morphogramephic rules such

as defection rules. A derivative Arabic word can in

general be considered as an incremental

application of different level of such rules to a root

such Phonetic, N-Gram, Morph-Syntactic rules.

Introducing further formal details for these as-

pects such as the applicative feature of generating

words based on root-pattern substitutions consider-

ing phonetic Morho-Syntactic rules exceeds scope of

this paper. The focus of attention of this presentation

is centered on simple basic derivative words in the

context of establishing root- pattern relationships.

2.1 Representing Words as

Root-Pattern Relations

In the traditional Arabic computational NLP com-

munity, root-pattern relationship is generally consid-

ered from lexical look-up point of view; i.e. a bi-

nary relationship expressing simply the presence of a

root with a pattern or not. However, as it is well-

known; due to historical reasons and difficulties of

presenting short vowels without diacritics, the

overwhelming written Arabic texts are not vocalized.

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148

Figure 1: Root-Pattern Instantiations as Applicative Function Representation for the three radical root ri(/ﻚﻠﻣ/,mlk, Owning).

Some root and pattern predicative values

rpv

ppv

are depicted.

Considering additionally the fact that an Arabic root

usually occurs with many different not vocalized

patterns, would exemplify the main reason for the

strong ambiguity and in particular in the lexical

level in Arabic.

Such ambiguity is two fold in the sense, that for

one root there will be many possible unvocalized

patterns, and for a one pattern there might be

more than one possible root whereas each root-

pattern relationship might represent different word

senses. The first type represents some kind of

polysemy. In Figure1, the pattern pt

(/ﻞﻌﻓ/, f’l); due

to the missing diacritics or short vocalizations on

lexical level, is ambiguous and it can be interpreted

in different ways. For example, in the above figure,

application of the root r

=(ﻚﻠﻣ/, mlk, Owning) to

different possible patterns might produce many dif-

ferent instantiations for root such as

3-1

(/ﻞﱢﻌَﻓ/, fa’’il)Θ

root

)=(/ﻚﱢﻠﹶﻣ/,mallik, give possession).

3-2

(/ ُﻞﹾﻌﻓ /,fu’l)Θ

root

) =(/ﻚْﻠﹸﻣ/, mulk, possession).

3-3

(/ﻞﹶﻌَﻓ/,fa’al)Θ

root

)= (/ﻚَﻠﹶﻣ /, malak, angel).

3-j

(/ﻞﹺﻌَﻓ/,fa’il) Θ

root

)= ( /ﻚﹺﻠﹶﻣ/, malik, king)

and many other possibilities

Resolving such ambiguities based on semantic

or selection restrictions and dictionary look-up is

complex and needs in may cases exhaustive search.

In his approach, this paper is proposing to extend

the representation of such relationships using novel

probabilistic root-pattern relations, considering

the possibility of extending this model to work on

the discourse representation level within a N-gram

analysis towards a hybrid approach.

3 REPRESENTING WORDS AS

PROBABLISITC RELATIONS

As patterns or templates are significant for gen-

erating correct derivative words, root-pattern and

pattern-root relationships in form of compatible or

consistent rules can be established. Based on

frequency of occurrence of a root with a pattern

and occurrence of a pattern with a specific root, a

probabilistic root-pattern and pattern-root relation-

ship can be represented.

Definition 3 (Pattern-Predictive and Root-Predictive

Values).

Let r

∈R, pt

∈PT then Root-Pattern Relationships

REPRESENTATION OF ARABIC WORDS - An Approach Towards Probabilistic Root-Pattern Relationships

149

can be established as follows:

oot {((), ) | () }∈×

R

r , pt ppv r , pt

ij ij

RPT

(4)

where P( / )



i-j ji

ppv pt r

Root

PT {(( ), ) | ( ) }∈×



,r pt rpv r , pt

ij i j

RPT

(5)

where P( / )



ij ij

rpv r pt

oot

can be interpreted as uncertain forward

binary rules where as

Root

can be interpreted as

uncertain backwards binary rules.

Example:

Let r

=(/ﺐﺘﻛ /, ktb, Writing)∈R , pt

=(/ﻝﹾﻮﹸﻌْﻔﹶﻣ /,

maf ‘ū l)

∈PT then based on

P( / )

pt r

we can estab-

lish a binary uncertain relation expressing the

probability for predicting the instantiation of the

pattern pt

=(/ﻝﹾﻮﹸﻌْﻔﹶﻣ /, maf ‘ū l) with the given root

such as

(/ﺐﺘﻛ /, ktb, Writing)

⎯

⎯⎯→

ppv

(/ﻝﹾﻮﹸﻌْﻔﹶﻣ /, maf ‘ū l)

On the other hand, we can establish a binary un-

certain relation expressing the probability for

predicting that the instantiated root in the pattern

(/ﻝﹾﻮﹸﻌْﻔﹶﻣ /, maf ‘ū l), is the root (/ﺐﺘﻛ/, ktb, Writing):

ﺐﺘﻛ/, ktb, Writing)

←⎯⎯

rpv

(/ﻝﹾﻮﹸﻌْﻔﹶﻣ /, maf ‘ū l)

Table 1: Samples of some computed root predictive

alues,

rpv

, and pattern predictive values,

ppv , based

on a templaic root-pattern substitution for the root( )ﺐﺘﻛ .

j ptj

(كتب)

rpv

(كتب)

ppv

(/ُﻞﹶﻋﺎَﻓ /, fā‘alu)

0.00055428 0.00003988

(/ٌﻞﹶﻋﺎَﻓ /, fā‘alun)

0.00175608 0.00004226

ﻞﹶﻋﺎَﻓ /, fā‘ala)

0.00012753 0.00001161

(/ٌﻝﺎﹶﻌَﻓ /, fa‘ālun)

0.00237203 0.00308527

(/ٍﻝﺎﹶﻌَﻓ /, fa‘ālin)

0.00504853 0.00336621

(/ٌﺔَﻠﹶﻌْﻔﹺﻣ /, mif‘alatun)

0.00244802 0.00003274

(/ًﺔَﻠﹶﻌْﻔﹺﻣ /, mif‘alatan)

0.00192429 0.00006547

(/ﻝﹾﻮﹸﻌْﻔﹶ

ﻣ

/, maf ‘ū l)

0.00524251 0.00140051

(/ًﻝﹾﻮﹸﻌْﻔﹶ

ﻣ

/, maf ‘ū lan)

0.01169770 0.00049225

(/ﹺﺔَﻟْﺎﹶﻌَﻓ /, fa‘ālati )

0.00071093 0.00001657

Based on the morphological analysis of a corpus

containing 50544830 Arabic word-forms in one flat

file about size 990 MB and Arabic dictionaries of

about 31.5MB, normalized conditional probabilities

have been assigned to 6860 Arabic roots in asso-

ciation with 650 patterns. The words have morpho-

logically been pre-processed before computing the

Root and Pattern Predictive Values. The data has

been analyzed by ATW morphological analyzer,

(http://www.arabtext.ws/), whereas suffixes and pre-

fixes, stems, patterns and roots were initially ex-

tracted to be a subject of the subsequentail statisti-

cal analysis.

3.1 Applications

The significance of the introduced values; i.e. Root

and Pattern Predictive Values depends on the

application being observed in solving some Arabic

NLP problem. Pattern Predictive Relations might

be interpreted as forward uncertain rules; and

namely, as lexicon look-up is actually a root-based

search process, due to historical and lexicographical

organizational reasons. On the other hand Pattern

Predictive Values support processes involved in

generating the most probable word patterns for some

possible root; for example within a correcting proc-

ess. This aspect can be significant for resolving

some ambiguities and in ranking possible correcting

candidates.

Root Predictive Values might come into ef-

fect in the case of generating the most probable

roots, within a root-extraction process such as

morphological analysis. These aspects might be ex-

tended to different possible applications such in-

dexing, information retrieval and simple word-sense

disambiguation.

The author has already utilized the introduced

predictive values in a hybrid approach to detect and

correct non-words in Arabic. The results were very

helpful in optimizing the root-extraction process and

in particular if the words were strongly deformed;

whereas Pattern Predictive Values were signifi-

cant in ranking and generating the most probable

word candidates as possible correction. One of the

most interesting outcomes of integrating these

measures within this project were the quality of the

results; as they have supported producing accurate

and natural correcting candidates compared to

standard spell-checkers such as Arabic MS-Word;

details are found in (Haddad B. and Yaseen M,

2007).

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4 CONCLUSIONS

This paper is an attempt to provide Arabic NLP with

new probabilistic measures supporting issues in-

volved in generating the most probable word pat-

terns and roots on the lexical level. Based on statisti-

cal analysis of morphologically pre-processed cor-

pus containing 50544830 Arabic word-forms, root

and pattern predictive values have been estimated

and assigned to 6860 Arabic roots in association

with 650 patterns. In this context Root and Pat-

tern Predictive Values were introduced, which

might be interpreted as uncertain binary relations.

The applicability of theses measures is wide-

ranging such as supporting morphological analysis,

word-sense disambiguation and non-word detection

and correction on the lexical level, whereas syntacti-

cal cases of the pattern can also be considered.

These values have successfully been utilized in a

hybrid approach to detect and correct Arabic Non-

Words.

One interesting aspect of introducing these

measures lies in the fact that root-pattern phenome-

non of Arabic has directly been considered within a

statistical model, which might reflect more natural

result than pure and general purpose N-Gram analy-

sis, used by different Arabic researchers.

On the other side, despite the fact that this model

has considered the isolated morpho-syntactical pat-

tern forms and their expected roots, it needs to be

integrated within a discourse representational sta-

tistical language model to support more context

depended applications such as deep semantic

analysis and others. Presenting a comprehensive

model based on the introduced measures exceeds the

scope of this paper. The author is working on

pursuing this objective considering more aspects,

which can benefit from the presented measures

besides investigating additional measures based on

exploring the semantic potential of the introduced

measures statistically.

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APPENDIX A

Transcription of Arabic Letters based on DIN and

(Fischer, 1972). Long vowels are represented

through the letters ( ا , ā), (ى, ī) and (و, ū), while short

vowels as follows: ( fatḥa,

—َ , a), (kasrah, —ِ , i)

and (

ḍammah, —ُ , u).

Letter Transcription Name

ﺀ

‘

hamza

ﺍ

Ā ’alif

ﺏ

B bā’

REPRESENTATION OF ARABIC WORDS - An Approach Towards Probabilistic Root-Pattern Relationships

151

Letter Transcription Name

ﺕ

T tā’

ﺙ

t ā’t

ﺡ

ḥ ḥā’

ﺥ

ḫ ḫā’

ﺩ

d dāl

ﺫ

d āld

ﺭ

r rā’

ﺯ

z zāy

ﺱ

s sān

ﺵ

š šīn

ﺹ

ṣ



ād

ﺽ

ḍ ḍāḍ

ﻁ

ṭ ṭ ā’

ﻅ

ẓ ẓ ā’

ﻉ

‘

‘ain

ﻍ

ġ ġain

ﻑ

f f ā’

ﻕ

q qāf

ﻙ

k kāf

ﻝ

l lām

ﻡ

m mīm

ﻥ

n nūn

ﻩ

h hā’

ﻭ

w, ū wāw

ﻯ

y, ī y ā’

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