Arabic Morphology and Syntax within the Frameworks of LMF and LFG

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Arabic Morphology and Syntax within the
Frameworks of LMF and LFG
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• Arabic Morphosyntactic system
• Lexical Markup Framework
• LFG

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• Arabic Language
• Semitic language
• Right-to-left writing
• Case-marked
• Rich flectional and derivational systems
  (concatenative language)

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Arabic Phonetic System

• Consonants (Ex ? b, ? t, ? f)
• Long Vowels (Ex ? w, ? y)
• Short vowels (Ex ? u, ? i) gt
  Diacritics
• (Buckwalters Arabic Transliteration System)

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Arabic Morphology

• Words generation is based on roots and patterns.
• Root
• Ex k-t-b, (write)
• Pattern
• faEala (main pattern do) gt kataba
• fAEil (doer/agent) gt kAtib writer
• mafEwl (undergoer/patient, theme) gtmaktwb
  written
• MafEal (location) gt maktab desk

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Morphosyntactic Categories

• Pronouns
• Verbs
• Nouns and adjectives
• Prepositions
• Adverbs (Preposition biNoun)
• Particles

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Pronouns

• Personal pronouns
• Isolated (anA I, hum they)
• Affix-pronouns (-hu him/it, -hunna them.FEM)
• Demonstrative pronouns (hA this.MASC, tilka
  that.FEM)
• Relative Pronouns (alay who/which.MASC,
  alatAni who/which.FEM.DUAL)

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Pronoun Categorisation
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Verbs

• Aspect/Tense
• Mood
• Voice

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Verb Description
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• Jussive (almajzwm)
• lam yaktub.
• Didnt he write.
• He didnt write.
• Energetic
• laaktubana.
• I (do) will write. (No English counterpart)

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Verbs

• Aspect
• Mood
• Voice
• Agreement (Person, Gender, Number)
• Affix Pronoun
• Particles (Ex Prepositions, Future )

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Morphosyntactic Inflections for Verbs
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Example of Morphosyntactic Inflections for Verbs

• sa- uEty- kumA (????????)
• will I give you

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Nouns and Adjectives

• Gender
• Masculine
• Feminine
• Number
• Singular
• Dual
• Plural
• (gt Agreement between Noun and Adjective)
• Grammatical case (NOM, ACC, GEN)
• Affix-Pronouns (Clitics) and Definiteness

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Nouns and Adjectives
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Example of Inflections for Nouns

• KitAb book
• KitAb-un N_SG_M_DEF-_NOM
• a book
• al-kitAba N_SG_M_DEF_ACC
• The book (OBJ)
• kitAb-ay-kumA
• N_DUAL_M_DEF_GEN/ACC_AFFPR-kumA
• Your two books (OBJ)
• bi-kitAb-ay-kumA
• N_DUAL_M_DEF_GEN_AFFPR-kumA_AFFPREP-bi
• By your two books.

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Prepositions

• Independent (Ex min from, ilA to..)
• Affixation AffixPronoun
• Ex min-hu from him
• Affixed (Ex bi with, li for)
• Verb/Noun/Adjective
• EX li-yaktuba to write

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Lexical Markup Framework

• XML-based
• Lexical Entry Description
• Inventory
• Constraints
• Data Category Register (DCR)

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DCR Sample
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Lexical Markup Framework

• Morphalou (Salmon-Alt 2004)
• MafEalw (Akrout 2005)

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Sample From MafEalw
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LFG for Arabic

• Objectives induce Treebank-based LFG resources
  for Arabic.
• Arabic characteristic features
• Morphosyntactic system.
• Inflectional system (patterns, clitics, )
• Clause types (nominal, verbal)
• Diacritics

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aEty- tmw- ny-
hA.Gave you.PL.MASC me
it.SG.FEMYou gave it (to) me.

• SUBJ TYPE CLITIC
• PERS 2
• GENDER MASC
• NUM PL
• ASPECT PERFECT
• MOOD INDICATIVE
• VOICE ACTIVE
• PRED aEtYlt(SUBJ)(OBJ)(OBJ)gt
• CLITIC tm
• CLITIC ny
• CLITIC hA
• OBJ
• OBJ

• SUBJ TYPE CLITIC
• PRED tm
• PERS 2
• GENDER MASC
• NUM PL
• ASPECT PERFECT
• MOOD INDICATIVE
• VOICE ACTIVE
• PRED aEtYlt(SUBJ)(OBJ)(OBJ)gt
• OBJ TYPE CLITIC
• PRED ny
• PERS 1
• GENDER MASC/FEM
• NUM SG
• OBJ TYPE CLITIC

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References

• Akrout, A (2005), Pre-doctoral dissertation 
  Modélisation dun lexique flexionnel de lArabe
  Classique, University of Metz, France.
• Blachère, R. Gaudefroy-Démombynes, M. (1975).
  Grammaire de l'arabe classique. 3rd edition, G.P.
  MAISONNEUVE LAROSE (Ed), Paris, France.
• Cavalli-Sforza, V., Soudi, A. Mitamura, T.
  (2000). Arabic Morphology Generation Using a
  Concatenative Strategy, in The Proceedings of
  NAACL-2000. on line http//acl.ldc.upenn.edu/A/A
  00/A00-2012.pdf
• Fillmore, Ch. (1968). The case for case. In
  Bach, E., Harms, R. T., Eds., Universals in
  Linguistic Theory. Holt, Rinehart and Winston,
  New York 1-88.
• Fleisch, H. (1961). Traité de Philologie
  Arabe, vol I, préliminaires, Phonétique,
• Morphologie Nominale, Tome XVI. 247-267.
• George, M. Francopoulo, G. (2004). Lexical
  Markup Framework (LMF). Working Draft
  (ISO-24613). On line http//www.tagmatica.fr/doc
  .htm
• Versteegh, K. (1997). The Arabic Language.
  Edinburgh University Press, Great
• Britain, University Press, Cambridge. 74-92.

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• Any questions?