Part 3/3, Trilingual: Arabic/Indonesian/English, available on Academia.edu, Linked-In and researchgate.net
اراول ّشوتسُس ىىسذٌهولا
ىىُبىساحلا نهلشفب
ٍف جاتًإ دساىه تُودؼه شُغ ؟تقُقد اهو ؟لوؼلا
بي ىن شكفٚ ٌٕعذًُٓنا ٌٕٛثٕعبحنا
جسبخ حُٓي خيٕظُي ذػإمنا
،حذحإنا ىْٔ
ٌٕنٔبحٚ زُي 22 ، بيبػ فٕعٔ
ٌٔدٔبؼٚ خنٔبحًنا
ادذدي بثجػٔ ٍئ ٌٔد ٖٔذخ دبجثلإ ٖذي " تهءلاه تُِّلاّؼَفو " ىٓدُٓي ىٓربٛيصسإخٔ .
خفبػلإبث ٗنإ
ىٓيبًزْإ ،دبٛيصسإخنبث
ىَٓئف ٌٕخبزحٚ ٗنإ
حدبػإ شظُنا ٙف جرًُٕنا ٘ذٛهمزنا بمفٔ فاذْلأ عاشغأٔ
فشظنا ّٙثٕعبحنا .
بي ىن ٍكٚ ىٓٚذن شجظنا ضّحفزهن كٛلذنا
مٛطبفزن فٚشظزنا
،ّراشٛغزئ ىَٓئف
ًٌٕكحي ٌأ
إهػبفزٚ غي ءاشجخ ازْ
ممحنا .
زٌه 52 ،اهاػ نػذت ثاهدلا تُػاشلا يُسذٌهولا يُُبىساحلا
نهتابساقهو تقهاشولا
Bisakah Para Ahli Komputer Berpikir Beda?
Translation to Indonesian by Prihantoro
http://pri2011.blogspot.fr/
Frasa ‘rich and complex morphology” yang disematkan pada bahasa Arab, banyak digunakan
sebagai kata kunci pada karya tulis oleh ahli komputer, sekitar 50%.Salah satu betapa ‘kaya’ dan ‘kompleksnya’ morfologi bahasa arab adalah adanya 4 pola infleksi (Gender, Jumlah, Definiteness, Kasus) sementara bahasa Perancis hanya memiliki dua.
Ada dua sisi kompleksitas yang kadang-kadang sulit dibedakan. Perrtama adalah kompleksitas
morfofonemiknya; dan yang ke dua adalah kompleksitas pada tataran aplikasi. Sejauh ini para
ahli komputer terperangkap pada terbatasnya implementasi dan pola pikir mereka.
Berbagai model yang berbasiskan morfologi tradisional sudah diaplikasikan oleh beberapa tim
peneliti. Ada dua kelemahan umum. Yang pertama, konsep morfologi tradisional ditelan
bulat-bulat tanpa memahami makna dan tujuannya. Yang ke dua, tidak ada lexical resource yang
akurat yang dihasilkan..
Berikut adalah bagian dari paper yang dihasilkan oleh tim komputer dari Columbia University.
Mereka memiliki pemahaman morfofonemis yang cukup dan mengadaptasi pola morfologi
tradisional.
« We also exclude all analyses involving non-triliteral roots and non-templatic word
stems since we do not even attempt to handle them in the current version of our
rules». (Altantawy et al., 2010:856).
The rules are compatible only with triliteral nouns we are not evaluating our lexicon
coverage (...). Future work will address the crucial issue of creating and evaluating a
comprehensive lexicon » (Altantawy et al., 2010:856).
Bagian dari paper mereka menunjukan ada hal yang tidak diteliti, seperti akar konsonan yang
non-triliteral (3 huruf). Ada juga aturan yang hanya bisa diaplikasikan pada nomina trilateral. Ini
menunjukan masih banyak celah yang bisa diperbaiki, atau bahkan tak mungkin untuk sempurna
jika
Dengan kata lain, cukup sulit untuk melakukan formalisasi leksikon bahasa arab dengan
model root/pattern/rules yang mereka gunakan. Dengan menggunakan model ini, formalisasi
akar konsonan tidak bisa dipisahkan dari kelas infleksi, serta dilakukan dengan mengikuti
sejumlah aturan yang berlaku untuk setiap entri. Tim Columbia University, harus mengorbankan
cakupan kosakata untuk mengikuti model ini.
Menciptakan sejumlah rumus dan mengupdatenya adalah pekerjaan yang tidak mudah. Pada
tahun 2009, sejumlah rumus fonologis telah diadaptasi dalam sistem text-to-speech bahasa Arab
yang digunakan di http://translate.google.com. Perubahan yang dilakukan (aturan baru,
modifikasi, perubahan tata urut) dilakukan atas dasar perbandingan dengan membandingkan
penemuan fonologis terbaru dengan yang lalu. Tanpa disadari, perubahan di positif di satu sisi
kadang memiliki dampak negatif di sisi lain. Ini karena rumus-rumus itu dimasukan pada satu
kolam yang sama, sehingga perbaikan tidak dapat terkontrol dengan baik.
Lima belas tahun sebelum paper Alantawy et al, Beesley telah menunjukan potensi permasalahan
akar konsonan yang merupakan underlying representation. Menurut Beesley, linguis
terpengaruh oleh kompleksitas ini sehingga kadang menyederhanakan aturan pada tataran
Mengapa para ahli komputer tanpa pikir panjang langsung mengadaptasi model tradisional ini?
Ini karena focus mereka adalah algoritma, bukan morfologi. Mereka tidak tertarik pada sisi
ilmiah morfologi atau pandangan-pandangan kritis mengenai morfologi tradisional.
Namun demikian, rumus tersebut tidaklah mengakomodir kelas infleksi leksikal: sebuah
rumus baru akan mempengaruhi entri lain, meskipun sudah dilakukan indeksasi pada entri mana
saja rumus itu akan berlaku. Para ahli komputer kadang tidak melihat sisi negatif ini. Jika jumlah
rumus dalam satu kolom yang sama bertambah, maka persilangannya dengan rumus lain akan
bertambah banyak, dan membuat kompleksitas meningkat sehingga sulit dikontrol. Yang lebih
penting lagi adalah tata urut aplikasi rumus tersebut. Memeriksa, memperbaiki dan mengupdate
rumus-rumus dalam satu kolam yang sama memang sangat sulit.
Sebaliknya, dalam perspektif kelas infleksi, rumus-rumus tadi dikelompokan dalam kolam yang
berbeda, sehingga persilangan yang terjadi sangatlah terbatas pada satu kelas khusus. Dalam
leksikologi, kategorisasi ini bermanfaat untuk mereduksi persilangan antar kelas, meskipun
terkadang ada pengulangan entri. Akan tetapi hal ini tidak terlalu sulit ditangani.
Seorang linguis bahasa arab akan mampu memberikan penjelasan yang detil mengenai fenomena
morfologi kompleks dengan merujuk pada kelas infleksi yang berbeda. Kadang kompleksitas
inilah yang tidak terlalu disukai oleh para ahli komputer.
Bisakah para ahli komputer membuat lexical resource yang komprehensif? Tidak jika mereka
tidak mengubah cara berpikir mereka. Model yang mereka gunakan sejak 1990 sudah terbukti
gagal karena gagal menyesuaikan transisi morfologi tradisional ke morfologi komputasi. Jika
mereka tidak memiliki kesabaran untuk mempelajari morfologi bahasa Arab, maka mereka harus
Selama 25 tahun, para sponsor telah mendukung pandangan naïf ahli komputer yang
menjanjikan lexical resource yang komprehensif, tanpa bantuan dari ahli morfofonemik bahasa
Can computer scientists think
Arabic computational morphology
out of the box?
Alexis Amid Neme and Eric Laporte
Part 3/3
At the end of the nineties, Arabic gained the reputation of having a “rich and
complex morphology”. As much as half of the scientific papers in Arabic NLP start with this key
phrase. The richness of Arabic morphology is obvious, since for instance Arabic nouns have four
inflectional features (Gender, Number, Definiteness, Case) while French nouns have two.
However, the complexityhas two facets: the complexity of the details of morpho-phonological
facts; and the complexity due to the implementation of their description. The stereotype of the
rich and complex morphology might well hide confusion between the two facets, where
computer scientists are overwhelmed by the inadequacy of their own approach and
implementation.
Various models based on the traditional model were implemented by research teams. These
implementations have two common points: the traditional model was taken for granted totally or
partially without questioning its aims and definitions; and no accurate lexical resource was
produced meanwhile.
Below, two extracts from publications of the Columbia University team, one of the best teams of
computer scientists working on Arabic NLP, since 2005. This team has a suitable knowledge of
« We also exclude all analyses involving non-triliteral roots and non-templatic word
stems since we do not even attempt to handle them in the current version of our
rules». (Altantawy et al., 2010:856).
« The project has an on-going part for nouns, including BPs (Altantawy et al., 2010).
The rules are compatible only with triliteral nouns: we are not evaluating our lexicon
coverage (...). Future work will address the crucial issue of creating and evaluating a
comprehensive lexicon » (Altantawy et al., 2010:856).
In other words, encoding such rules for the entire Arabic lexicon is a challenge, or is even almost
impossible, in the root/pattern/rules approach. In this approach, root alternations are not
formalized separately for each inflectional class, but controlled by a single pool of rules a priori
applicable to all entries. The Columbia team had to shrink the lexical coverage to be able to
stick to the approach.
Making a set of rules, and even updating it, is an incredibly complex task. In 2009, in an Arabic
Text-To-Speech system, now used in http://translate.google.com, we have set up a pool of
Arabic phonological rules. The assessment of a change in the pool (inserting a new rule,
modifying a rule, changing the order of rules) involved comparing on-the-fly the new
phonological output with a previous one, taken as the best reference so far. Each change required
a trial and error process, where each output displayed some improvements and some damaging
of the previous reference. Fine-tuning a pool of rules is inevitably an uncontrolled, empirical
groping process.
Fifteen years before Altantawy et al.'s paper, Beesley had pointed out in his own model a related
issue, the useless complexity induced by the « deep » root, the underlying lexical representation
influences the linguist to simplify the rules by postulating a rather surfacy lexical
level » (Beesley, 1996:91).
Why do computer scientists take for granted so promptly the traditional model of morphology
and the traditional view of deep roots?
- Their main concern is algorithms, not morphology. They are not sufficiently inclined to
scientific curiosity for morphology or to critical thinking about traditional views.
But the usual rule approach lacks the notion of lexical inflectional class: a rule affects several
kinds of lexical entries since it is not limited by an index of the entries (or classes) affected by
each rule. Rules are powerful devices, and computer scientists tend to overlook the drawbacks of
such power. If the number of rules in the same pool increases, rule interdependency increases
significantly, fuelling complexity to the point of uncontrollability. Moreover, the order of
application of the rules is significant and must be decided and encoded. Checking, correcting and
updating such a pool of rules are heavy tasks.
Contrariwise, in an approach with the notion of inflectional class, the dependencies of a rule are
limited to a class, which is a range of lexical entries. In lexicology for language processing, the
notion of class allows for devising a common process shared by the entries of a class, reducing
the complexity to the number of classes (typically a few hundred) instead of the number of
lexical entries (in the dozens of thousands). Experience shows that a separate, simpler cluster of
rules for each class is more convenient to handle, even if at the cost of some redundancy between
classes.
An expert in Arabic morphology is able to give precise and detailed descriptions of
implement Arabic morphology in a rather simple way, even in full details; although computer
scientists find the same details tedious and even annoying.
In fact, part of the complexity is intrinsic to the facts of Arabic morphology proper, but we can
dispense with the complexity that originates from the root/pattern/rules approach.
Back to our question in Part 1, why will computer scientists continue failing to produce an
accurate Arabic lexical resource? And what to do?
- Unless computer scientists think out of the box of the rules approach, they are trying
since 1990 and will retry in vain to prove the adequacy of this approach.
- Beyond their interest for algorithms, they need to rethink the traditional model according
to computational morphology’s goals and purposes.
- Finally, unless they have patience for meticulous observation in Arabic morphology, they
need to interact with those that have.
For 25 years, sponsors have been supporting computer scientists’ naive vision of projects
promising an accurate Arabic lexical resource and without an expert in morpho-phonology. Till
References
Beesley, Kenneth R. (1996). Arabic finite state morphological analysis and generation. In
Proceedings of the InternationalConference on Computational Linguistics (COLING),
Copenhagen, Center for Sprogteknologi, volume 1, pages 89-94.
Buckwalter, Timothy (1990). Lexicographic notation of Arabic noun pattern morphemes and
their inflectional features. In Proceedings of the Second Cambridge Conference on Bilingual
Computing of Arabic and English. 7 pages.
Altantawy, Mohamed; Habash, Nizar; Rambow, Owen; Saleh, Ibrahim (2010). Morphological
Analysis and Generation ofArabic Nouns: A Morphemic Functional Approach. In Proceedings of
the Language Resource and Evaluation Conference (LREC), Malta, pages 851-858.
Altantawy, Mohamed; Habash, Nizar; Rambow, Owen (2011). Fast Yet Rich Morphological
Analysis. In Proceedings of the 9th International Workshop on Finite State Methods and Natural
Language Processing (FSMNLP), pages 116-124.
Neme, Alexis, Laporte Éric (2013). Pattern-and-root inflectional morphology: the Arabic broken
plural. Language Sciences.
Neme, Alexis (2011). A lexicon of Arabic verbs constructed on the basis of Semitic taxonomy
and using finite-state transducers. In Proceedings of the International Workshop on Lexical
Resources (WoLeR) at ESSLLI.
Neme, Alexis (2014). Why Microsoft Arabic Spell checker is ineffective.
