A finite-state morphological grammar of Hebrew

Morphological analysis is a crucial component of several natural language processing tasks, especially for languages with a highly productive morphology, where stipulating a full lexicon of surface forms is not feasible. We describe HAMSAH (HAifa Morphological System for Analyzing Hebrew), a morphological processor for Modern Hebrew, based on finite-state linguistically motivated rules and a broad coverage lexicon. The set of rules comprehensively covers the morphological, morpho-phonological and orthographic phenomena that are observable in contemporary Hebrew texts. Reliance on finite-state technology facilitates the construction of a highly efficient, completely bidirectional system for analysis and generation. HAMSAH is currently the broadest-coverage and most accurate freely-available system for Hebrew

A finite-state morphological grammar of Hebrew

Morphological analysis is a crucial component of several natural language processing tasks, especially for languages with a highly productive morphology, where stipulating a full lexicon of surface forms is not feasible. This paper describes HAMSAH (HAifa Morphological System for Analyzing Hebrew), a morphological processor for Modern Hebrew, based on finite-state linguistically motivated rules and a broad coverage lexicon. The set of rules comprehensively covers the morphological, morpho-phonological and orthographic phenomena that are observable in contemporary Hebrew texts. Reliance on finite-state technology facilitates the construction of a highly efficient, completely bidirectional system for analysis and generation.

A finite-state morphological grammar of Hebrew. Natural Language Engineering

Morphological analysis is a crucial component of several natural language processing tasks, especially for languages with a highly productive morphology, where stipulating a full lexicon of surface forms is not feasible. We describe HAMSAH (HAifa Morphological System for Analyzing Hebrew), a morphological processor for Modern Hebrew, based on finite-state linguistically motivated rules and a broad coverage lexicon. The set of rules comprehensively covers the morphological, morpho-phonological and orthographic phenomena that are observable in contemporary Hebrew texts. Reliance on finite-state technology facilitates the construction of a highly efficient, completely bidirectional system for analysis and generation. HAMSAH is currently the broadest-coverage and most accurate freely-available system for Hebrew. 1 Hebrew morphology: the challenge Hebrew, like other Semitic languages, has a rich and complex morphology. The major word formation machinery is root-and-pattern, where roots are sequences of three (typically) or more consonants, called radicals, and patterns are sequences of vowels and, sometimes, also consonants, with “slots” into which the root’s consonants are being inserted (interdigitation). Inflectional morphology is highly productive and consists mostly of suffixes, but sometimes of prefixes or circumfixes