[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/lingbulk-2022-eid-maaloula-aramaic-speech-corpus-masc/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [docs](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/) / [papers](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/) / [Aramaic](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/arc/) / The Maaloula Aramaic Speech Corpus (MASC): From Printed Material to a Lemmatized and Time-Aligned Corpus # The Maaloula Aramaic Speech Corpus (MASC): From Printed Material to a Lemmatized and Time-Aligned Corpus **Authors:** Ghattas Eid; Esther Seyffarth; Ingo Plag · **Year:** 2022 · **Venue:** Proceedings of the Thirteenth Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (LREC 2022), pp. 6513–6520 **Link:** [aclanthology.org/2022.lrec-1.699](https://aclanthology.org/2022.lrec-1.699/) · library `lingbulk-2022-eid-maaloula-aramaic-speech-corpus-masc` · **Licence:** [CC BY-NC 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) (ELRA, LREC proceedings) — summary only [**0** citations](https://openalex.org/works?filter=cites:W7160242151) openalex-snapshot · 2026-10-14[Proceedings of the Thirteenth Language Resources and Evaluation Conference](https://aclanthology.org/volumes/2022.lrec-1/)[licence](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) - [Publisher's page](https://aclanthology.org/2022.lrec-1.699/) - [PDF](https://aclanthology.org/2022.lrec-1.699.pdf) - [DOI 10.63317/2sbg63r7bc8y](https://doi.org/10.63317/2sbg63r7bc8y) - [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W7160242151) **Authors (3)** 1. [Ghattas Eid](https://openalex.org/A5093562964) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4003-7003) · [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/2185390283) · h 2 · 5 citations · 9 works 2. [Esther Seyffarth](https://openalex.org/A5010164899) [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/41133674) · h 2 · 15 citations · 10 works 3. [Ingo Plag](https://openalex.org/A5079436055) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3545-3515) · [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/80790017) · h 35 · 7060 citations · 208 works Citations and author metrics from openalex-snapshot (2026-10-14); authors with the same name are not always told apart. ## What it is about The corpus turns the printed transcriptions of 173 tape-recorded narratives in Maaloula Aramaic, a Western Neo-Aramaic variety of Syria, into a usable resource. It contains 64,845 word tokens from 45 speakers. The printed texts were scanned with OCR (which does not know the language, so it drops diacritics), corrected by a native consultant against the audio, and marked for the author's errors with [sic] and for loanwords with tags. A hand-made list of 12,220 word forms was mapped to 3,781 lemmas from 1,932 roots using the author's dictionary. The audio (about 10 hours) was denoised and aligned to the text with WebMAUS, giving four tiers in Praat. The corpus is offered in four formats, including an SQLite database with eight linked tables. The authors also show one study that used the corpus to test a generalisation on vowel epenthesis. ## Ideas - I1. A table of deterministic OCR corrections for an Aramaic printed edition: the substitutions S to ʕ, c to č, ö to ō and ô to ō. The paper shows that other confusions (š and ṣ, ḳ and k, ḥ and h, where the OCR drops the diacritic) cannot be fixed automatically, so the table should be paired with a list of words for hand correction. This goes into `tools/ocrfix`. - I2. Mark interrupted words, false starts and speaker errors with separate tags that the tokenizer reads as classes, not as lemmas. The paper keeps "--" for interrupted words and "..." for false starts, and this distinction matters for the parser's input. - I3. A root search as a test for the lexicon: the wildcard search for the root of "to become" in the lemma list finds 197 forms in the text, of which some are false hits from a different root. A rule with the root fixed by the lemma table gives a gold test of root extraction in [The lexicon of Biblical Aramaic](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/arc/lexicon/). ## For Mova I1 goes into `tools/ocrfix` as an Aramaic OCR case. I2 is a tagging rule for `tools/langseg` and the Aramaic tokenizer. I3 is a test for [The lexicon of Biblical Aramaic](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/arc/lexicon/) and for the root table of [The Aramaic family and the Jewish varieties](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/arc/family/). The corpus itself is licensed NC and is for tests only, so no text from it is carried into a release. ## Cite The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. [DOI 10.63317/2sbg63r7bc8y](https://doi.org/10.63317/2sbg63r7bc8y) ``` @inproceedings{eid2022maaloula, title = {{The Maaloula Aramaic Speech Corpus (MASC): From Printed Material to a Lemmatized and Time-Aligned Corpus}}, author = {Eid, Ghattas and Seyffarth, Esther and Plag, Ingo}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the Thirteenth Language Resources and Evaluation Conference}, year = {2022}, doi = {10.63317/2sbg63r7bc8y}, url = {https://doi.org/10.63317/2sbg63r7bc8y} } ``` - [← previous From Pattern to Interpretation. Using Colibri Core to Detect Translation Patterns in the Peshitta.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/lingbulk-2022-coeckelbergs-pattern-interpretation-colibri-core-detect/) - [↑ back to Aramaic](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/arc/) ## References 26 references, 1 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet. 1. Anthony, L. (2020). AntConc [Computer program] (Version 3.5.9) [Computer software]. Version 3.5.9, retrieved from [https://www.laurenceanthony.net/software](https://www.laurenceanthony.net/software) [↗](https://www.laurenceanthony.net/software) 2. Arnold, W. (1991a). Das Neuwestaramäische: III. Volkskundliche Texte aus Maʿlūla. Otto Harrassowitz. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Arnold%2C+W%2E+%281991a%29%2E+Das+Neuwestaram%C3%A4ische%3A+III%2E+Volkskundliche+Texte+aus+Ma%CA%BFl%C5%ABla%2E+Otto+Harrassowitz%2E) 3. Arnold, W. (1991b). Das Neuwestaramäische: IV. Orale Literatur aus Maʿlūla. 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