Experiments with a stemming algorithm for Malay words

Stemming is used in information retrieval systems to reduce variant word forms to common roots in order to improve retrieval effectiveness. As in other languages, there is a need for an effective stemming algorithm for the indexing and retrieval of Malay documents. The Malay stemming algorithm developed by Othman is studied and new versions proposed to enhance its performance. The improvements relate to the order in which the dictionary is looked-up, the order in which the morphological rules are applied, and the number of rules. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.