Hebrew Computational Linguistics: Past and Future

This paper reviews the current state of the art in Natural Language Processing for Hebrew, both theoretical and practical. The Hebrew language, like other Semitic languages, poses special challenges for developers of programs for natural language processing: the writing system, rich morphology, unique word formation process of roots and patterns, lack of linguistic corpora that document language usage, all contribute to making computational approaches to Hebrew challenging. The paper briefly reviews the field of computational linguistics and the problems it addresses, describes the special difficulties inherent to Hebrew (as well as to other Semitic languages), surveys a wide variety of past and ongoing works and attempts to characterize future needs and possible solutions.

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2004
• Where: AIR
• Authors: Shuly Wintner
• Keywords: AIR 2004, Hebrew, Natural Language, Unique Word Formation