Research Article Open Access

QArabPro: A Rule Based Question Answering System for Reading Comprehension Tests in Arabic

Mohammed Akour1, Sameer Abufardeh1, Kenneth Magel1 and Qasem Al-Radaideh2
  • 1 Department of Computer Science North Dakota, State University Fargo, ND 58105, Jordan
  • 2 Department of Computer Information System, Yarmouk University Irbid, Jordan

Abstract

Problem statement: Extensive research efforts in the area of Natural Language Processing (NLP) were focused on developing reading comprehension Question Answering systems (QA) for Latin based languages such as, English, French and German. Approach: However, little effort was directed towards the development of such systems for bidirectional languages such as Arabic, Urdu and Farsi. In general, QA systems are more sophisticated and more complex than Search Engines (SE) because they seek a specific and somewhat exact answer to the query. Results: Existing Arabic QA system including the most recent described excluded one or both types of questions (How and Why) from their work because of the difficulty of handling these questions. In this study, we present a new approach and a new questionanswering system (QArabPro) for reading comprehension texts in Arabic. The overall accuracy of our system is 84%. Conclusion/Recommendations: These results are promising compared to existing systems. Our system handles all types of questions including (How and why).

American Journal of Applied Sciences
Volume 8 No. 6, 2011, 652-661

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3844/ajassp.2011.652.661

Submitted On: 2 December 2010 Published On: 14 June 2011

How to Cite: Akour, M., Abufardeh, S., Magel, K. & Al-Radaideh, Q. (2011). QArabPro: A Rule Based Question Answering System for Reading Comprehension Tests in Arabic. American Journal of Applied Sciences, 8(6), 652-661. https://doi.org/10.3844/ajassp.2011.652.661

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Keywords

  • Arabic Q/A system
  • Information Retrieval (IR)
  • Natural Language Processing (NLP)
  • arabic language
  • acronyms
  • Information Extraction (IE)
  • morphological root
  • morphological analysis
  • QA systems
  • Stemming-root extraction