Qabas: An Open-Source Arabic Lexicographic Database

TL;DR

Qabas is a comprehensive open-source Arabic lexicon that integrates 110 lexicons and links to 12 corpora, facilitating advanced NLP applications with extensive lexical and morphological data.

Contribution

It introduces the first Arabic lexicon linked to multiple lexicons and corpora, developed semi-automatically, and is the most extensive resource of its kind.

Findings

Contains about 58K lemmas, including nominal, verbal, and functional words.

Links to 12 morphologically annotated corpora with 2 million tokens.

First Arabic lexicon with integrated lexicon and corpus links.

Abstract

We present Qabas, a novel open-source Arabic lexicon designed for NLP applications. The novelty of Qabas lies in its synthesis of 110 lexicons. Specifically, Qabas lexical entries (lemmas) are assembled by linking lemmas from 110 lexicons. Furthermore, Qabas lemmas are also linked to 12 morphologically annotated corpora (about 2M tokens), making it the first Arabic lexicon to be linked to lexicons and corpora. Qabas was developed semi-automatically, utilizing a mapping framework and a web-based tool. Compared with other lexicons, Qabas stands as the most extensive Arabic lexicon, encompassing about 58K lemmas (45K nominal lemmas, 12.5K verbal lemmas, and 473 functional-word lemmas). Qabas is open-source and accessible online at https://sina.birzeit.edu/qabas.