A standard tag set expounding traditional morphological features for Arabic language part-of-speech tagging

The SALMA Morphological Features Tag Set (SALMA, Sawalha Atwell Leeds Morphological Analysis tag set for Arabic) captures long-established traditional morphological features of grammar and Arabic, in a compact yet transparent notation. First, we introduce Part-of-Speech tagging and tag set standards for English and other European languages, and then survey Arabic Part-of-Speech taggers and corpora, and long-established Arabic traditions in analysis of morphology. A range of existing Arabic Part-of-Speech tag sets are illustrated and compared; and we review generic design criteria for corpus tag sets. For a morphologically-rich language like Arabic, the Part-of-Speech tag set should be defined in terms of morphological features characterizing word structure. We describe the SALMA Tag Set in detail, explaining and illustrating each feature and possible values. In our analysis, a tag consists of 22 characters; each position represents a feature and the letter at that location represents a value or attribute of the morphological feature; the dash ‘-’ represents a feature not relevant to a given word. The first character shows the main Parts of Speech, from: noun, verb, particle, punctuation, and Other (residual); these last two are an extension to the traditional three classes to handle modern texts. ‘Noun’ in Arabic subsumes what are traditionally referred to in English as ‘noun’ and ‘adjective’. The characters 2, 3, and 4 are used to represent subcategories; traditional Arabic grammar recognizes 34 subclasses of noun (letter 2), 3 subclasses of verb (letter 3), 21 subclasses of particle (letter 4). Others (residuals) and punctuation marks are represented in letters 5 and 6 respectively. The next letters represent traditional morphological features: gender (7), number (8), person (9), inflectional morphology (10) case or mood (11), case and mood marks (12), definiteness (13), voice (14), emphasized and non-emphasized (15), transitivity (16), rational (17), declension and conjugation (18). Finally there are four characters representing morphological information which is useful in Arabic text analysis, although not all linguists would count these as traditional features: unaugmented and augmented (19), number of root letters (20), verb root (21), types of nouns according to their final letters (22). The SALMA Tag Set is not tied to a specific tagging algorithm or theory, and other tag sets could be mapped onto this standard, to simplify and promote comparisons between and reuse of Arabic taggers and tagged corpora

Ṭāhā Ḥusayn : his place in the Egyptian literary renaissance

PART I: THE EGYPTIAN RENAISSANCE. Chapter 1. The Epoch of Acquisition. • Chapter 2. The Epoch of Dilation. • Chapter 3. The Need for Guidance. • • PART II: THE MANN. Chapter 4. His Life. • Chapter 5. His Character. • • PART III: THE REFORMER. Chapter 6. His Philosophy. • Chapter 7. Modernism. • Chapter 8. The Social Order. • Chapter 9. Education. • • PART IV: THE MAY OF LETTERS. Chapter 10. Criticism - Theories. • Chapter 11. Scientific Criticism. • Chapter 12. Artistic Criticism. • Chapter 13. Criticism - The Wider Field. • Chapter 14. Story-Telling.Appendix 1. Al -Katib ul -Misri t s Publications. Chapter 15. Social Studies. • • PART V: THE CRAFTSMAN Chapter 16. Form and Style • • APPENDICES. Appendix 1. Al -Katib ul -Misri's Publications. • Appendix 2. Summaries of Táhá Husayn's novels. • • BIBLIOGRAPHY

Pierre Cachia Oral History

Pierre Cachia was an undergraduate student at AUC from 1938 until his graduation in 1942. Cachia describes academics at AUC in those years, including drawbacks like degrees unrecognized by the government, faculty members varied in quality, and the ease of getting though without much exertion. Balancing these were the chance to choose one’s classes (including courses relevant to contemporary Egyptian society), instruction in and requirements for library research, and dedicated professors. Faculty who made an impression on him, like Worth Howard, Herbert Vandersall, and Amir Boktor, are mentioned. He describes classmates and the impact of coeducation with female students, as well as campus social life and extracurricular activities like the drama performances of the Maskers club. Cachia also discusses the limited impact of the Second World War at the university, beyond campus discussions such as in a class on war and peace. A British subject by virtue of his Maltese family background, after graduation he served in an Allied fighting unit for three years, and tells of discussions with classmates and teachers shaping his decision to do so (despite his pacifist leanings), and how his AUC education prepared him for the experience. Cachia later taught at AUC from 1946-1948, earned a doctorate in Arabic language from Edinburgh University and went on to an academic career at New York’s Columbia University