Yor-Sarc: A gold-standard dataset for sarcasm detection in a low-resource African language

TL;DR

This paper introduces Yor-Sarc, the first high-quality sarcasm detection dataset for Yorùbá, a low-resource African language, with detailed annotation protocols and high inter-annotator agreement to support NLP research.

Contribution

The creation of Yor-Sarc, a culturally informed, gold-standard sarcasm dataset for Yorùbá, including annotation guidelines and analysis of annotation reliability.

Findings

Achieved substantial to almost perfect inter-annotator agreement.

Demonstrated the dataset's potential to improve sarcasm detection in low-resource languages.

Provided a benchmark for future NLP research in Yorùbá and similar languages.

Abstract

Sarcasm detection poses a fundamental challenge in computational semantics, requiring models to resolve disparities between literal and intended meaning. The challenge is amplified in low-resource languages where annotated datasets are scarce or nonexistent. We present \textbf{Yor-Sarc}, the first gold-standard dataset for sarcasm detection in Yor\`{u}b\'{a}, a tonal Niger-Congo language spoken by over $50$ million people. The dataset comprises 436 instances annotated by three native speakers from diverse dialectal backgrounds using an annotation protocol specifically designed for Yor\`{u}b\'{a} sarcasm by taking culture into account. This protocol incorporates context-sensitive interpretation and community-informed guidelines and is accompanied by a comprehensive analysis of inter-annotator agreement to support replication in other African languages. Substantial to almost perfect agreement was achieved (Fleiss' $\kappa = 0.7660$; pairwise Cohen's $\kappa = 0.6732$--$0.8743$), with $83.3\%$ unanimous consensus. One annotator pair achieved almost perfect agreement ($\kappa = 0.8743$; $93.8\%$ raw agreement), exceeding a number of reported benchmarks for English sarcasm research works. The remaining $16.7\%$ majority-agreement cases are preserved as soft labels for uncertainty-aware modelling. Yor-Sarc\footnote{https://github.com/toheebadura/yor-sarc} is expected to facilitate research on semantic interpretation and culturally informed NLP for low-resource African languages.