Standard Arabic formalization and linguistic platform for its analysis

From the beginning of the sixties, and starting with the first automatic analyzer proposed by David Cohen, one of the first theorists of NLP [1], research has continued with natural language processing and especially the automatic treatment of the Arabic language. In 1983, with a minimalist morphological analysis, based on the theory that any Arabic form is generated using root and pattern, researchers developed the first twolevel morphological analyzer for Arabic (Koskenniemi 1983); this work was included within the project ALPNET (Beesley and Buckwalter 1989) using finite-state technology allowing only the concatenation of morphemes in the morphotactics. Since 1996, the Xerox research centre has enhanced this system using an algorithm of automatic combination between roots and patterns generating stems; this research is based on the ALPNET’s dictionaries which were, considerably rebuilt using the Xerox finite-state technology (Beesley 2001). This technology is computationally very efficient for natural-language-processing; it’s used within the developmental environment NooJ (Silberztein 2006). The use of finite-state machines within NooJ was extremely attractive, they are used to generate and analyse several thousands of words per second. This linguistic platform will be described inside this paper as the tool used for vocabulary formalization and analysis of standard Arabic language.