Automatic Annotation of Locative and Directional Expressions in Arabic

Abstract: In this paper, we introduce a rule-based approach to annotate Locative and Directional Expressions in Arabic natural language text. The annotation is based on a constructed semantic map of the spatiality domain. Challenges are twofold: first, we need to study how locative and directional expressions are expressed linguistically in these texts; and second, we need to automatically annotate the relevant textual segments accordingly. The research method we will use in this article is analytic-descriptive. We will validate this approach on specific novel rich with these expressions and show that it has very promising results. We will be using NOOJ as a software tool to implement finite-state transducers to annotate linguistic elements according to Locative and Directional Expressions. In conclusion, NOOJ allowed us to write linguistic rules for the automatic annotation in Arabic text of Locative and Directional Expressions.