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# A Derivational ChainBank for Modern Standard Arabic

**Authors:** [Reham Marzouk](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/authors/reham-marzouk/); Sondos Krouna; [Nizar Habash](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/authors/nizar-habash/) · **Year:** 2025 · **Venue:** Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on NLP for Languages Using Arabic Script, pp. 78–87 **Link:** [aclanthology.org/2025.abjadnlp-1.9](https://aclanthology.org/2025.abjadnlp-1.9/) · library `aclbulk-2025-marzouk-derivational-chainbank-modern-standard-arabic` · **Licence:** [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) (ACL Anthology)

[**0** citations](https://openalex.org/works?filter=cites:W4404314037) openalex · 2026-10-18[**1** citations in our library](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/cited-by/aclbulk-2025-marzouk-derivational-chainbank-modern-standard-arabic/) of the 140673 papers whose bibliographies we read[Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on NLP for Languages Using Arabic Script](https://aclanthology.org/volumes/2025.abjadnlp-1/)[licence](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

- [Publisher's page](https://aclanthology.org/2025.abjadnlp-1.9/)
- [PDF](https://aclanthology.org/2025.abjadnlp-1.9.pdf)
- [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W4404314037)

**Authors (3)**

1. [Reham Marzouk](https://openalex.org/A5052802378) h 2 · 17 citations · 10 works
2. [Sondos Krouna](https://openalex.org/A5058718735) h 1 · 8 citations · 19 works
3. [Nizar Habash](https://openalex.org/A5084517393) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1831-3457) · h 57 · 12233 citations · 359 works

Citations and author metrics from openalex (2026-10-18); authors with the same name are not always told apart.

## What it is about

The paper builds a derivational resource for Modern Standard Arabic: for each root, a tree that links every derived lemma (masdar, active and passive participles, nouns of place, adjectives in -iy, and so on) to its base, through a network of abstract patterns. The network has three tables: a canonical table of root-and-pattern forms, an affixational table generated from the canonical entries plus derivational affixes, and a semantic-specification table for shifts of meaning or part of speech. The network is aligned with the lemmas of the CAMeL Morph analyzer by an allowed-pair rule on the attributes of child and parent. On 100 hand-checked root trees (25 for development, 75 for test), 71% of the test lemmas are linked (88% on development), and 92% of the detected links are correct and unambiguous. Applied to about 4,900 roots, the method gives 23,333 relations, of which about 68% are linked. The main gaps are missing primary nouns, incomplete lemma families in the analyzer, and missing non-canonical patterns.

## Ideas

- I1. Use the paper's four-way score as the measure for any derivational chain built from lemmas: the share of gold lemmas linked, the share linked with one correct parent, the share with several candidate parents, and the share with none. Build the 100-tree gold set by hand from a Hebrew root list (the paper's 25/75 dev/test split is the template).
- I2. Write the Hebrew root-and-pattern forms as a canonical table (qal, niphal, piel, pual, hiphil, hophal, hitpael, and the nominal patterns of [The Noun, the Adjective and the Numeral](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/hbo/04-noun/)), then generate the affixed forms (for example the abstract suffix -ut and the relative -i) from that table, instead of listing them by hand.
- I3. Keep the unlinked lemmas as an explicit "unknown parent" relation rather than dropping them or forcing them onto the root. The paper suggests this for disconnected subtrees; in Mova it would show up in `world` as a visible gap.

## For Mova

I1 is a test set and a measure for a derivational layer on top of `macula dict`, which has lemmas and Strong's numbers but no roots yet. I2 is a table design for [The verb](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/hbo/06-verb/) (binyanim) and [The Noun, the Adjective and the Numeral](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/hbo/04-noun/) (nominal patterns). I3 is a convention for `world`, to be recorded in [The lexicon](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/hbo/10-lexicon/). None of the ideas needs a neural model.

## Cite

The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work.

```
@inproceedings{marzouk2025derivational,
  title = {{A Derivational ChainBank for Modern Standard Arabic}},
  author = {Marzouk, Reham and Krouna, Sondos and Habash, Nizar},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on NLP for Languages Using Arabic Script},
  year = {2025},
  url = {https://aclanthology.org/2025.abjadnlp-1.9/}
}
```

- [← previous EvaCun 2025 Shared Task: Lemmatization and Token Prediction in Akkadian and Sumerian using LLMs](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/aclbulk-2025-gordin-evacun-2025-shared-task-lemmatization/)
- [next → Beyond Base Predictors: Using LLMs to Resolve Ambiguities in Akkadian Lemmatization](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/aclbulk-2025-riemenschneider-beyond-base-predictors-llms-resolve/)
- [↑ back to Semitic languages](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/sem/)

## References

25 references, 9 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

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2. Kenneth Beesley. 1998. Arabic morphology using only [https://github.com/CAMeL-Lab/ArabicChainBank](https://github.com/CAMeL-Lab/ArabicChainBank) finite-state operations. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Computational Approaches to Semitic Languages (CASL), pages 50–7, Montereal. [↗](https://github.com/CAMeL-Lab/ArabicChainBank) [our card](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/aclbulk-1998-beesley-arabic-morphology-only-finite-state/)
3. Mohamed Boudchiche, Azzeddine Mazroui, Mohamed Ould Abdallahi Ould Bebah, Abdelhak Lakhouaja, and Abderrahim Boudlal. 2017. AlKhalil Morpho Sys2: A robust Arabic morpho-syntactic analyzer. Journal of King Saud University-Computer and Information Sciences, 29(2):141–146. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Mohamed+Boudchiche%2C+Azzeddine+Mazroui%2C+Mohamed+Ould+Abdallahi+Ould+Bebah%2C+Abdelhak+Lakhouaja%2C+and+Abderrahim+Boudlal%2E+2017%2E+AlKhalil+Morpho+Sys2%3A+A+robust+Arabic+morpho%2Dsyntactic+analyzer%2E+Journal+of+)
4. Abderrahim Boudlal, Abdelhak Lakhouaja, Azzeddine Mazroui, Abdelouafi Meziane, MOAO Bebah, and Mostafa Shoul. 2010. AlKhalil Morpho Sys1: A morphosyntactic analysis system for Arabic texts. In International Arab conference on information technology, pages 1–6. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Abderrahim+Boudlal%2C+Abdelhak+Lakhouaja%2C+Azzeddine+Mazroui%2C+Abdelouafi+Meziane%2C+MOAO+Bebah%2C+and+Mostafa+Shoul%2E+2010%2E+AlKhalil+Morpho+Sys1%3A+A+morphosyntactic+analysis+system+for+Arabic+texts%2E+In+Interna)
5. Ryan Cotterell, Ekaterina Vylomova, Huda Khayrallah, Christo Kirov, and David Yarowsky. 2017. Paradigm completion for derivational morphology. arXiv preprint arXiv:1708.09151. [↗](https://arxiv.org/abs/1708.09151)
6. Hassan Gadalla. 2000. Comparative Morphology of Standard and Egyptian Arabic. LINCOM EUROPA. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Hassan+Gadalla%2E+2000%2E+Comparative+Morphology+of+Standard+and+Egyptian+Arabic%2E+LINCOM+EUROPA%2E)
7. Nizar Habash and Bonnie Dorr. 2003. CatVar: a database of categorial variations for English. In Proceedings of Machine Translation Summit IX: System Presentations, New Orleans, USA. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Nizar+Habash+and+Bonnie+Dorr%2E+2003%2E+CatVar%3A+a+database+of+categorial+variations+for+English%2E+In+Proceedings+of+Machine+Translation+Summit+IX%3A+System+Presentations%2C+New+Orleans%2C+USA%2E) [our card](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/lex-2003-habash-catvar/)
8. Nizar Habash, Reham Marzouk, Christian Khairallah, and Salam Khalifa. 2022. Morphotactic modeling in an open-source multi-dialectal arabic morphological analyzer and generator. In Proceedings of the 19th SIGMORPHON Workshop on Computational Research in Phonetics, Phonology, and Morphology, pages 92–102. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Nizar+Habash%2C+Reham+Marzouk%2C+Christian+Khairallah%2C+and+Salam+Khalifa%2E+2022%2E+Morphotactic+modeling+in+an+open%2Dsource+multi%2Ddialectal+arabic+morphological+analyzer+and+generator%2E+In+Proceedings+of+the+1) [our card](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/lingbulk-2022-habash-morphotactic-modeling-open-source-multi/)
9. Nizar Habash and Owen Rambow. 2006. MAGEAD: A morphological analyzer and generator for the Arabic dialects. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Computational Linguistics and the Conference of the Association for Computational Linguistics (COLING-ACL), pages 681–688, Sydney, Australia. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Nizar+Habash+and+Owen+Rambow%2E+2006%2E+MAGEAD%3A+A+morphological+analyzer+and+generator+for+the+Arabic+dialects%2E+In+Proceedings+of+the+International+Conference+on+Computational+Linguistics+and+the+Conferen) [our card](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/aclbulk-2006-habash-magead-morphological-analyzer-generator-arabic/)
10. Nizar Habash, Owen Rambow, and Ryan Roth. 2012. MADA+TOKAN Manual. Technical report, Technical Report CCLS-12-01, Columbia University. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Nizar+Habash%2C+Owen+Rambow%2C+and+Ryan+Roth%2E+2012%2E+MADA%2BTOKAN+Manual%2E+Technical+report%2C+Technical+Report+CCLS%2D12%2D01%2C+Columbia+University%2E)
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14. Valentin Hofmann, Hinrich Schütze, and Janet Pierrehumbert. 2020. A graph auto-encoder model of derivational morphology. In Proceedings of the 58th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, pages 1127–1138, Online. Association for Computational Linguistics. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Valentin+Hofmann%2C+Hinrich+Sch%C3%BCtze%2C+and+Janet+Pierrehumbert%2E+2020%2E+A+graph+auto%2Dencoder+model+of+derivational+morphology%2E+In+Proceedings+of+the+58th+Annual+Meeting+of+the+Association+for+Computational+)
15. Clive Holes. 2004. Modern Arabic: Structures, functions, and varieties. Georgetown University Press. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Clive+Holes%2E+2004%2E+Modern+Arabic%3A+Structures%2C+functions%2C+and+varieties%2E+Georgetown+University+Press%2E)
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17. Christian Khairallah, Salam Khalifa, Reham Marzouk, Mayar Nassar, and Nizar Habash. 2024a. Camel morph MSA: A large-scale open-source morphological analyzer for Modern Standard Arabic. In Proceedings of the 2024 Joint International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC-COLING 2024), pages 2683– 2691, Torino, Italia. ELRA and ICCL. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Christian+Khairallah%2C+Salam+Khalifa%2C+Reham+Marzouk%2C+Mayar+Nassar%2C+and+Nizar+Habash%2E+2024a%2E+Camel+morph+MSA%3A+A+large%2Dscale+open%2Dsource+morphological+analyzer+for+Modern+Standard+Arabic%2E+In+Proceedings+) [our card](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/coling-2024-khairallah-camel-morph-msa-large-scale/)
18. Christian Khairallah, Reham Marzouk, Salam Khalifa, Mayar Nassar, and Nizar Habash. 2024b. Computational morphology and lexicography modeling of Modern Standard Arabic nominals. In Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EACL 2024, pages 1071–1084, St. Julian’s, Malta. Association for Computational Linguistics. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Christian+Khairallah%2C+Reham+Marzouk%2C+Salam+Khalifa%2C+Mayar+Nassar%2C+and+Nizar+Habash%2E+2024b%2E+Computational+morphology+and+lexicography+modeling+of+Modern+Standard+Arabic+nominals%2E+In+Findings+of+the+Ass) [our card](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/aclbulk-2024-khairallah-computational-morphology-lexicography-modeling-modern/)
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