Open problems in Arabic semantic and discourse understanding

Investigate the open problems in Arabic word-sense disambiguation, figurative-language understanding, and discourse coherence that arise in Quranic semantic analysis.

Background

The paper defines Semantics as the broadest pillar of the QuranicMMLU taxonomy. It includes lexical ambiguity, figurative language, and surah-level meaning, thereby targeting several areas that the paper explicitly characterizes as unresolved in Arabic language technology and discourse analysis.

These areas motivate benchmark questions concerning Quranic word meanings, figurative interpretation, and coherence across larger textual units rather than isolated verse-level retrieval.

References

Semantics, the widest pillar, covers lexical ambiguity (furūq, wujūh wa naẓā’ir), figurative language, and surah-level meaning, all open problems in Arabic word-sense disambiguation, figurative-language understanding, and discourse coherence.

— QuranicMMLU: A Cognitively-Aware Benchmark for Evaluating Generative AI Solutions on Quranic Linguistic Knowledge  (2609.22038 - Ghali et al., 18 Sep 2026) in Section “Taxonomies,” paragraph describing the Semantics pillar