An improved root extraction technique for Arabic words

• Published in: 2010 2nd International Conference on Computer Technology and Development pp. 264 - 269
• Main Authors: Al-Nashashibi, M Y, Neagu, D, Yaghi, A A
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01-11-2010
• Subjects: Arabic Root Extraction; Natural Language Processing; Pragmatics; Rule-Based Stemming; Text Mining; Weaving
• ISBN: 9781424488445; 1424488443
• DOI: 10.1109/ICCTD.2010.5645872

Arabic text interpretation depends among other things on a pre-processing stage in extracting effectively a correct stem or root. We address in this work a linguistic approach for root extraction as a pre-processing step for Arabic text mining. The linguistic approach is composed of a rule-based light stemmer and a pattern-based infix remover. We propose an algorithm to handle weak, eliminated-long-vowel, hamzated, and geminated words since the linguistic approach does not handle such cases and a reasonably large portion of Arabic words in texts are irregular. The accuracy of the extracted roots is determined by comparing them with a predefined list of 5,405 triliteral and quadriliteral roots. The linguistic approach performance (with and without the proposed correction algorithm) was tested on an in-house text collection of eight categories. The proposed correction algorithm improved the accuracy of the linguistic one by about 14%.