International Journal of Arabic-English Studies (IJAES), 2020
Discourse markers are words or phrases used in both speech and writing to signal relationships be... more Discourse markers are words or phrases used in both speech and writing to signal relationships between discourse segments, including clauses, sentences and even larger portions of texts such as paragraphs. Their proper use in writing effectively contributes to textuality standards, particularly cohesion and coherence. On the other hand, learners' misuse, underuse or overuse of these markers may negatively impact the quality of the texts that these learners produce. This paper examined the ability of a group of Arab learners of English as a foreign language (ALEFL) from the University of Sharjah to recognize and produce discourse markers in written compositions. Using two elicitation techniques, the researchers collected data for this research from a sample of one hundred Arab learners studying English at the University of Sharjah. A test consisting of four parts was specially designed to evaluate participants' ability to recognize and produce discourse markers in context. In addition, two hundred compositions written by ALEFL were analyzed to investigate their ability to produce discourse markers. The data analysis revealed that the participants' ability to recognize and produce discourse markers was relatively low and their ability to recognize the functions of discourse markers in context was below expectations.
A new approach is proposed for studying Arabic morphosemantics, set in the belief that language e... more A new approach is proposed for studying Arabic morphosemantics, set in the belief that language evolves, has tendency for economy and simplification, and avoids synonymy. It is a corpus-based approach that utilizes, for theorization, modern written and spoken usage trends and native speaker questionnaires to support its claims. In demonstration, it is used here to study the meanings of verb-stem templates; it has established that each morphological pattern has a unique meaning in Modern Standard Arabic: I: eventuality; II: repetitiveness; III: commencement; IV: causation; V: reflexivity of repetitiveness; VI: reciprocity; VII: reflexivity; VIII: exertion; IX: acquisition of a color or trait; X: requisition. Key Words: Arabic; morphosemantics; morphological pattern; corpus-based approach; pattern frequency; linguistic survey.
This paper discusses the Arabic coordination particle wa and its use and function on the basis of... more This paper discusses the Arabic coordination particle wa and its use and function on the basis of the Gricean cooperative principle. It aims to provide an outline of the maxims utilized by Arabic speakers in their interpretation of this conjunction. It demonstrates that interpretation brings out a conflict between the Gricean conversational maxims. The context of communication is investigated for a resolution of the conflict. It is argued that context and the functional understanding of language are more decisive in the interpretation of language utterances than either the conventional meaning of a linguistic element or the principle of communicative cooperation.
This paper presents an ongoing research that aims to construct a sizable and reliable text corpus... more This paper presents an ongoing research that aims to construct a sizable and reliable text corpus along with a set of tools to experiment with natural language applications for Arabic. The corpus is used by graduate students at the University of Jordan (UJ) to conduct experiments on many useful applications. Earlier, we were not able to verify these experiments because of the lack of reliable data. We are working on annotating and tagging the corpus texts and making it available for researchers in XML format.
ABSTRACT This paper presents a historical Arabic corpus named HAC. At this early embryonic stage ... more ABSTRACT This paper presents a historical Arabic corpus named HAC. At this early embryonic stage of the project, we report about the design, the architecture and some of the experiments which we have conducted on HAC. The corpus, and accordingly the search results, will be represented using a primary XML exchange format. This will serve as an intermediate exchange tool within the project and will allow the user to process the results offline using some external tools. HAC is made up of Classical Arabic texts that cover 1600 years of language use; the Quranic text, Modern Standard Arabic texts, as well as a variety of monolingual Arabic dictionaries. The development of this historical corpus assists linguists and Arabic language learners to effectively explore, understand, and discover interesting knowledge hidden in millions of instances of language use. We used techniques from the field of natural language processing to process the data and a graph-based representation for the corpus. We provided researchers with an export facility to render further linguistic analysis possible.
This paper presents an ongoing research that aims to construct a sizable and reliable text corpus... more This paper presents an ongoing research that aims to construct a sizable and reliable text corpus along with a set of tools to experiment with natural language applications for Arabic. The corpus is used by graduate students at the University of Jordan (UJ) to conduct experiments on many useful applications. Earlier, we were not able to verify these experiments because of the lack of reliable data. We are working on annotating and tagging the corpus texts and making it available for researchers in XML format.
Parallelism is a well-recognized norm in English sentences; Dr. Johnson, Frances Bacon, and Walt ... more Parallelism is a well-recognized norm in English sentences; Dr. Johnson, Frances Bacon, and Walt Whitman are but few examples of creative writers who distinguished their styles with parallelism. Because they give texts an effect of balance, disrupted parallelism spoils writer-reader interaction, disorienting the reader and hampering the writer’s self-expression. Parallelism creates redundancy that is essential to textual predictability, an element responsible for reader’s facilitation of information mental processing. This paper explores the theoretical concept of parallelism and presents an empirical investigation of EFL learners’ use of parallelism. It surveys faulty parallel structures, classifies them into categories, explores their prevalence, and investigates the degree of difficulty that each poses. The experiment concludes that the degree of accuracy in learners’ use of parallelism does indirectly reflect proficiency and that parallelism categories are ranked in ascending order of difficulty as follows: verb phrasal, adverbial, noun phrasal, adjectival, correlative, clausal, and comparative.
It is impossible to perform root-based searching, concordancing, and grammar checking in Arabic w... more It is impossible to perform root-based searching, concordancing, and grammar checking in Arabic without a method to match words with roots and vice versa. A comprehensive word list is essential for incremental searching, predictive SMS messaging, and spell checking, but due to the derivational and inflectional nature of Arabic, a comprehensive word list is taxing on storage space and access speed. This paper describes a method for compactly storing and efficiently accessing an extensive dictionary of Arabic words by their morphological properties and roots. Compression of the dictionary is based on T-Code encoding, which follows the Huffman encoding model. The special characteristics inherent in the recursive augmentation method with which codes are created allow compact storage on disk and in memory. They also facilitate the eÏcient use of bandwidth, for Arabic text transmission, over intranets and the Internet.
Performing root-based searching, concordancing, and grammar checking in Arabic requires an effici... more Performing root-based searching, concordancing, and grammar checking in Arabic requires an efficient method for matching stems with roots and vice versa. Such mapping is complicated by the hundreds of manifestations of the same root. An algorithm based on the generation method used by native speakers is proposed here to provide a mapping from roots to stems. Verb roots are classified by the types of their radicals and the stems they generate. Roots are moulded with morphosemantic and morphosyntactic patterns to generate stems modified for tense, voice, and mode, and affixed for different subject number, gender, and person. The surface forms of applicable morphophonemic transformations are then derived using finite state machines. This paper defines what is meant by ‘stem’, describes a stem generation engine that the authors developed, and outlines how a generated stem database is compiled for all Arabic verbs.
Despite the long standing tradition of lexicography that Arabic prides itself on, the language do... more Despite the long standing tradition of lexicography that Arabic prides itself on, the language does not have a dictionary that states the origin of words and that traces their development across time. Several attempts have been made at it recently but failed, resulting in frustration and in the conclusion that the task is daunting. The main reason for failure is the sheer volume of work required. In this paper, we present a computational tool that would facilitate the compilation of an Arabic dictionary on historical principles. There are no openly available tools for Arabic dictionary making; if they do exist, they are jealously guarded for their commercial value; hence, they are unavailable to scholars who might want to take part in the grand endeavor of building an etymological Arabic dictionary. This research shall make its tool available to the open source community to encourage further development and refinement. The computational tool can also be used in the development of computer-assisted language learning software. Concordances, for example, are by-products of this research, yet they are invaluable to the teaching of grammar and morphology; they encourage learning by discovery.
Abstract: In this paper, we present a set of corpus linguistic tools for conducting historical se... more Abstract: In this paper, we present a set of corpus linguistic tools for conducting historical semantic research in the Arabic language. We compiled a Historical Arabic Corpus (HAC) that spans more than 1500 years of continuous language use. With techniques from the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP), the tools we presented here have been used to create the HAC and to explore lexical semantic change. The development of these tools is aimed at offering a catalyst to the ambitions goal of compiling an Arabic dictionary on historical principles. HAC and the tools can also be used for conducting research in a variety of areas of linguistics.
8:30 – 9:00 Computer Processing of Arabic Script-based Languages: Current State and Future Direct... more 8:30 – 9:00 Computer Processing of Arabic Script-based Languages: Current State and Future Directions Ali Farghaly ... 9:00 – 9:30 Developing an Arabic Treebank: Methods, Guidelines, Procedures, and Tools Mohamed Maamouri and Ann Bies ... 9:30 – 10:00 Preliminary Lexical Framework for English-Arabic Semantic Resource Construction Anne R. Diekema ... 10:00 – 10:30 The Architecture of a Standard Arabic Lexical Database: Some Figures, Ratios and Categories from the DIINAR.1 Source Program Ramzi Abbès, Joseph Dichy and Mohamed Hassoun
... KEYWORDS: Arabic; coordination; cooperative principle; conversation maxim; context. 1. Introd... more ... KEYWORDS: Arabic; coordination; cooperative principle; conversation maxim; context. 1. Introduction ... (al-Qur'an al-Karīm, 5:6) 'O believers, when you stand up to pray, wash your faces and your hands up to the elbows, and wipe your heads...' (transl. by Arberry 1998) ...
International Journal of Arabic-English Studies (IJAES), 2020
Discourse markers are words or phrases used in both speech and writing to signal relationships be... more Discourse markers are words or phrases used in both speech and writing to signal relationships between discourse segments, including clauses, sentences and even larger portions of texts such as paragraphs. Their proper use in writing effectively contributes to textuality standards, particularly cohesion and coherence. On the other hand, learners' misuse, underuse or overuse of these markers may negatively impact the quality of the texts that these learners produce. This paper examined the ability of a group of Arab learners of English as a foreign language (ALEFL) from the University of Sharjah to recognize and produce discourse markers in written compositions. Using two elicitation techniques, the researchers collected data for this research from a sample of one hundred Arab learners studying English at the University of Sharjah. A test consisting of four parts was specially designed to evaluate participants' ability to recognize and produce discourse markers in context. In addition, two hundred compositions written by ALEFL were analyzed to investigate their ability to produce discourse markers. The data analysis revealed that the participants' ability to recognize and produce discourse markers was relatively low and their ability to recognize the functions of discourse markers in context was below expectations.
A new approach is proposed for studying Arabic morphosemantics, set in the belief that language e... more A new approach is proposed for studying Arabic morphosemantics, set in the belief that language evolves, has tendency for economy and simplification, and avoids synonymy. It is a corpus-based approach that utilizes, for theorization, modern written and spoken usage trends and native speaker questionnaires to support its claims. In demonstration, it is used here to study the meanings of verb-stem templates; it has established that each morphological pattern has a unique meaning in Modern Standard Arabic: I: eventuality; II: repetitiveness; III: commencement; IV: causation; V: reflexivity of repetitiveness; VI: reciprocity; VII: reflexivity; VIII: exertion; IX: acquisition of a color or trait; X: requisition. Key Words: Arabic; morphosemantics; morphological pattern; corpus-based approach; pattern frequency; linguistic survey.
This paper discusses the Arabic coordination particle wa and its use and function on the basis of... more This paper discusses the Arabic coordination particle wa and its use and function on the basis of the Gricean cooperative principle. It aims to provide an outline of the maxims utilized by Arabic speakers in their interpretation of this conjunction. It demonstrates that interpretation brings out a conflict between the Gricean conversational maxims. The context of communication is investigated for a resolution of the conflict. It is argued that context and the functional understanding of language are more decisive in the interpretation of language utterances than either the conventional meaning of a linguistic element or the principle of communicative cooperation.
This paper presents an ongoing research that aims to construct a sizable and reliable text corpus... more This paper presents an ongoing research that aims to construct a sizable and reliable text corpus along with a set of tools to experiment with natural language applications for Arabic. The corpus is used by graduate students at the University of Jordan (UJ) to conduct experiments on many useful applications. Earlier, we were not able to verify these experiments because of the lack of reliable data. We are working on annotating and tagging the corpus texts and making it available for researchers in XML format.
ABSTRACT This paper presents a historical Arabic corpus named HAC. At this early embryonic stage ... more ABSTRACT This paper presents a historical Arabic corpus named HAC. At this early embryonic stage of the project, we report about the design, the architecture and some of the experiments which we have conducted on HAC. The corpus, and accordingly the search results, will be represented using a primary XML exchange format. This will serve as an intermediate exchange tool within the project and will allow the user to process the results offline using some external tools. HAC is made up of Classical Arabic texts that cover 1600 years of language use; the Quranic text, Modern Standard Arabic texts, as well as a variety of monolingual Arabic dictionaries. The development of this historical corpus assists linguists and Arabic language learners to effectively explore, understand, and discover interesting knowledge hidden in millions of instances of language use. We used techniques from the field of natural language processing to process the data and a graph-based representation for the corpus. We provided researchers with an export facility to render further linguistic analysis possible.
This paper presents an ongoing research that aims to construct a sizable and reliable text corpus... more This paper presents an ongoing research that aims to construct a sizable and reliable text corpus along with a set of tools to experiment with natural language applications for Arabic. The corpus is used by graduate students at the University of Jordan (UJ) to conduct experiments on many useful applications. Earlier, we were not able to verify these experiments because of the lack of reliable data. We are working on annotating and tagging the corpus texts and making it available for researchers in XML format.
Parallelism is a well-recognized norm in English sentences; Dr. Johnson, Frances Bacon, and Walt ... more Parallelism is a well-recognized norm in English sentences; Dr. Johnson, Frances Bacon, and Walt Whitman are but few examples of creative writers who distinguished their styles with parallelism. Because they give texts an effect of balance, disrupted parallelism spoils writer-reader interaction, disorienting the reader and hampering the writer’s self-expression. Parallelism creates redundancy that is essential to textual predictability, an element responsible for reader’s facilitation of information mental processing. This paper explores the theoretical concept of parallelism and presents an empirical investigation of EFL learners’ use of parallelism. It surveys faulty parallel structures, classifies them into categories, explores their prevalence, and investigates the degree of difficulty that each poses. The experiment concludes that the degree of accuracy in learners’ use of parallelism does indirectly reflect proficiency and that parallelism categories are ranked in ascending order of difficulty as follows: verb phrasal, adverbial, noun phrasal, adjectival, correlative, clausal, and comparative.
It is impossible to perform root-based searching, concordancing, and grammar checking in Arabic w... more It is impossible to perform root-based searching, concordancing, and grammar checking in Arabic without a method to match words with roots and vice versa. A comprehensive word list is essential for incremental searching, predictive SMS messaging, and spell checking, but due to the derivational and inflectional nature of Arabic, a comprehensive word list is taxing on storage space and access speed. This paper describes a method for compactly storing and efficiently accessing an extensive dictionary of Arabic words by their morphological properties and roots. Compression of the dictionary is based on T-Code encoding, which follows the Huffman encoding model. The special characteristics inherent in the recursive augmentation method with which codes are created allow compact storage on disk and in memory. They also facilitate the eÏcient use of bandwidth, for Arabic text transmission, over intranets and the Internet.
Performing root-based searching, concordancing, and grammar checking in Arabic requires an effici... more Performing root-based searching, concordancing, and grammar checking in Arabic requires an efficient method for matching stems with roots and vice versa. Such mapping is complicated by the hundreds of manifestations of the same root. An algorithm based on the generation method used by native speakers is proposed here to provide a mapping from roots to stems. Verb roots are classified by the types of their radicals and the stems they generate. Roots are moulded with morphosemantic and morphosyntactic patterns to generate stems modified for tense, voice, and mode, and affixed for different subject number, gender, and person. The surface forms of applicable morphophonemic transformations are then derived using finite state machines. This paper defines what is meant by ‘stem’, describes a stem generation engine that the authors developed, and outlines how a generated stem database is compiled for all Arabic verbs.
Despite the long standing tradition of lexicography that Arabic prides itself on, the language do... more Despite the long standing tradition of lexicography that Arabic prides itself on, the language does not have a dictionary that states the origin of words and that traces their development across time. Several attempts have been made at it recently but failed, resulting in frustration and in the conclusion that the task is daunting. The main reason for failure is the sheer volume of work required. In this paper, we present a computational tool that would facilitate the compilation of an Arabic dictionary on historical principles. There are no openly available tools for Arabic dictionary making; if they do exist, they are jealously guarded for their commercial value; hence, they are unavailable to scholars who might want to take part in the grand endeavor of building an etymological Arabic dictionary. This research shall make its tool available to the open source community to encourage further development and refinement. The computational tool can also be used in the development of computer-assisted language learning software. Concordances, for example, are by-products of this research, yet they are invaluable to the teaching of grammar and morphology; they encourage learning by discovery.
Abstract: In this paper, we present a set of corpus linguistic tools for conducting historical se... more Abstract: In this paper, we present a set of corpus linguistic tools for conducting historical semantic research in the Arabic language. We compiled a Historical Arabic Corpus (HAC) that spans more than 1500 years of continuous language use. With techniques from the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP), the tools we presented here have been used to create the HAC and to explore lexical semantic change. The development of these tools is aimed at offering a catalyst to the ambitions goal of compiling an Arabic dictionary on historical principles. HAC and the tools can also be used for conducting research in a variety of areas of linguistics.
8:30 – 9:00 Computer Processing of Arabic Script-based Languages: Current State and Future Direct... more 8:30 – 9:00 Computer Processing of Arabic Script-based Languages: Current State and Future Directions Ali Farghaly ... 9:00 – 9:30 Developing an Arabic Treebank: Methods, Guidelines, Procedures, and Tools Mohamed Maamouri and Ann Bies ... 9:30 – 10:00 Preliminary Lexical Framework for English-Arabic Semantic Resource Construction Anne R. Diekema ... 10:00 – 10:30 The Architecture of a Standard Arabic Lexical Database: Some Figures, Ratios and Categories from the DIINAR.1 Source Program Ramzi Abbès, Joseph Dichy and Mohamed Hassoun
... KEYWORDS: Arabic; coordination; cooperative principle; conversation maxim; context. 1. Introd... more ... KEYWORDS: Arabic; coordination; cooperative principle; conversation maxim; context. 1. Introduction ... (al-Qur'an al-Karīm, 5:6) 'O believers, when you stand up to pray, wash your faces and your hands up to the elbows, and wipe your heads...' (transl. by Arberry 1998) ...
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Papers by Sane Yagi
Key Words: Arabic; morphosemantics; morphological pattern; corpus-based approach; pattern frequency; linguistic survey.
authors developed, and outlines how a generated stem database is compiled for all Arabic verbs.
Key Words: Arabic; morphosemantics; morphological pattern; corpus-based approach; pattern frequency; linguistic survey.
authors developed, and outlines how a generated stem database is compiled for all Arabic verbs.