Parallel corpus multi stream question answering with applications to the Qu'ran

Question-Answering (QA) is an important research area, which is concerned with developing an automated process that answers questions posed by humans in a natural language. QA is a shared task for the Information Retrieval (IR), Information Extraction (IE), and Natural Language Processing communities (NLP). A technical review of different QA system models and methodologies reveals that a typical QA system consists of different components to accept a natural language question from a user and deliver its answer(s) back to the user. Existing systems have been usually aimed at structured/ unstructured data collected from everyday English text, i.e. text collected from television programmes, news wires, conversations, novels and other similar genres. Despite all up-to-date research in the subject area, a notable fact is that none of the existing QA Systems has been tested on a Parallel Corpus of religious text with the aim of question answering. Religious text has peculiar characteristics and features which make it more challenging for traditional QA methods than other kinds of text. This thesis proposes PARMS (Parallel Corpus Multi Stream) Methodology; a novel method applying existing advanced IR (Information Retrieval) techniques, and combining them with NLP (Natural Language Processing) methods and additional semantic knowledge to implement QA (Question Answering) for a parallel corpus. A parallel Corpus involves use of multiple forms of the same corpus where each form differs from others in a certain aspect, e.g. translations of a scripture from one language to another by different translators. Additional semantic knowledge can be referred as a stream of information related to a corpus. PARMS uses Multiple Streams of semantic knowledge including a general ontology (WordNet) and domain-specific ontologies (QurTerms, QurAna, QurSim). This additional knowledge has been used in embedded form for Query Expansion, Corpus Enrichment and Answer Ranking. The PARMS Methodology has wider applications. This thesis applies it to the Quran – the core text of Islam; as a first case study. The PARMS Method uses parallel corpus comprising ten different English translations of the Quran. An individual Quranic verse is treated as an answer to questions asked in a natural language, English. This thesis also implements PARMS QA Application as a proof of concept for the PARMS methodology. The PARMS Methodology aims to evaluate the range of semantic knowledge streams separately and in combination; and also to evaluate alternative subsets of the DATA source: QA from one stream vs. parallel corpus. Results show that use of Parallel Corpus and Multiple Streams of semantic knowledge have obvious advantages. To the best of my knowledge, this method is developed for the first time and it is expected to be a benchmark for further research area

Developing Adaptive Islamic Law Business Processes Models for Islamic Finance and Banking by Text Mining the Holy Quran and Hadith.

Global Islamic finance assets grew from $200 billion to$1.8 trillion (IMF 2015) and is growing faster than the conventional banking sector. A large number of conventional financial institutions, especially banks are moving to an Islamic financial model that\u27s comply with the Shari\u27a Law with little change to current conventional practices (reverse eningineer current business processes) to accommodate the new situation. In this study we will design and develop the business processes for the Islamic financial institutions\u27 (IFIs) products by investigating and collecting information through Islamic literature, surveys and interviews of experts in Islamic jurisprudence, regulators, academic and Islamic finance and banking practitioners. Then we will assess and evaluate the findings by using a Qur\u27anic Financial Corpus and use computational and analytical approaches to mine the Qur\u27an (the Muslim Holy book) and the Hadith (actions and words of the prophet Muhammad peace be upon him) to uncover hidden knowledge on Islamic financial business processes. The knowledge acquired from this investigation will be translated into an Islamic financial process model to be adapted by Islamic and non-Islamic financial institutions. The outcome of this research will influence the future development, growth and diversification of Islamic Financial Services worldwid

A closer look at metaphysic strategies and language achievement of tertiary level Arabic learners

Surveys have shown that there is a significant relationship between the use of Language Learning Strategies (LLS) and the level of language mastery.There are also studies that attempt to explore whether students who are excellent in language use the LLS frequent and a lot.Therefore, this paper describes a study which has been designed to analyze the relationship between the application of metaphysic strategies and the Arabic language level of achievement.The research data was collected by using the self access questionnaire and Arabic language test.The research subjects consist of 385 undergraduate students who are taking an Arabic language course at the Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin, Terengganu.Descriptive statistics, including Pearson and Independent Sample T-Test were used to analyze the relationship between metaphysic strategies used and the level of Arabic language achievement.The findings from this study were:1) there was a significant correlation between metaphysic strategies used and the language achievement.2) there were significant differences in metaphysic strategies used based on the level of Arabic language achievement.3) Overall, good language learners possess a richer repertoire of strategies and employ metaphysic strategies more frequently than did their counterparts in lower achievement level categories

Religious quotations as declarative speech acts of arbitrators in shariah-based reconciliation case proceedings

Declarative utterances are the emphatic speeches officially uttered by speaker in giving information or announcement about something or its nature of being during Reconciliation Case Proceedings (RCP).This paper examines the use of religious quotation as a declarative speech act (SA) in Shariah-based RCP towards resolving family disputes on marital issues (FDMI).This study utilised 12 cases on FDMI and three Cases were found without a trace of this kind of illocutionary act.With the aid of Nvivo software and Searle’s declarative typology of SA, the data were coded and analysed.A total of 30 interactive turn-takings (ITT) of quotation utterances were being used by 14 participants.The paper revealed declarative act of quotation utterances as a sociopragmatic feature and monopoly practice of court officials in shariah-based RCP.The paper has also shown that court officials use verbatim quotes from Qur’an (the holy book of Allah), sayings of prophet and his disciples or the Islamic scholars during RCP in order to assert common ground, or give a hint on the position of Islam, shariah law, implication or meanings and decisions about a particular issue in dispute. The moderate use of the declarative act of quotation utterances court officials implies that it is not a mandatory SA in shariah-based RCP, yet it is a unique feature with significant impact in achieving success of dispute resolution

Arabic conversational agent for modern Islamic education

This thesis presents research that combines the benefits of intelligent tutoring systems (ITS), Arabic conversational agents (CA) and learning theories by constructing a novel Arabic conversational intelligent tutoring system (CITS) called Abdullah. Abdullah CITS is a software program intended to deliver a tutorial to students aged between 10 and 12 years old, that covers the essential topics in Islam using natural language. The CITS aims to mimic a human Arabic tutor by engaging the students in dialogue using Modern standard Arabic language (MSA), whilst also allowing conversation and discussion in classical Arabic language (CAL). Developing a CITS for the Arabic language faces many challenges due to the complexity of the morphological system, non-standardization of the written text, ambiguity, and lack of resources. However, the main challenge for the developed Arabic CITS is how the user utterances are recognized and responded to by the CA, as well as how the domain is scripted and maintained. This research presents a novel Arabic CA and accompanying a scripting language that use a form of pattern matching, to handle users’ conversations when the user converse in MSA. A short text similarity measure is used within Abdullah CITS to extract the responses from CAL resources such as the Quran, Hadith, and Tafsir if there are no matching patterns with the Arabic conversation agent’s scripts. Abdullah CITS is able to capture the user’s level of knowledge and adapt the tutoring session and tutoring style to suit that particular learner’s level of knowledge. This is achieved through the inclusion of several learning theories and methods such as Gagne’s learning theory, Piaget learning theory, and storytelling method. These learning theories and methods implemented within Abdullah’s CITS architecture, are applied to personalise a tutorial to an individual learner. This research presents the first Arabic CITS, which utilises established learning typically employed in a classroom environment. The system was evaluated through end user testing with the target age group in schools both in Jordan and in the UK. Empirical experimentation has produced some positive results, indicating that Abdullah CITS is gauging the individual learner’s knowledge level and adapting the tutoring session to ensure learning gain is achieved