Syntax and Parsing of Semitic Languages

The grammar of Semitic languages is different from that of English and many other languages. Therefore, general-purpose statistical parsers are not always equally successful when applied to Semitic data. This chapter presents the syntax of Semitic languages and discusses how it challenges existing general-purpose parsing architectures. We then survey the different components of a generative probabilistic parsing system and show how they can be designed and implemented in order to effectively cope with these challenges. We finally present parsing results obtained for Hebrew and Arabic using different technologies in different scenarios. While parsing Semitic languages can already be made quite accurate using the present techniques, remaining challenges leave ample space for future research.

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