Abstract
Building the valency lexicon of Arabic verbs
The proposed contribution will describe the building of a valency lexicon of Arabic verbs
using linguistically annotated corpus, The Prague Arabic Dependency Treebank (PADT),
as its primary source. Valency of a verb is a set of its obligatory and/or optional arguments
potentially or actually realized in an utterance. Valency is not predictable automatically.
Valency information is useful in restoring the syntactic structure of an utterance, and has
consequences for the study of the meaning. Valency lexicons can find application in
automatic parsing as well as in language generation.
The primary goal of the study is to prepare theoretical and methodological background for
creating the valency lexicon of the most frequent Arabic verbs based on the theoretical
framework of Functional Generative Description (FGD). This Arabic lexicon, inspired by
The Valency Lexicon of Czech Verbs VALLEX 2.0 ([http.//ufal.mff.cuni.cz/vallex/2.0;
Lopatková et al., 2006; Žabokrtský, 2005]), may be used in particular for the
tectogrammatical annotation of the PADT as well as for the proposed second edition of the
corpus-based Arabic-Czech Dictionary ([Zemánek et al., 2006]).
PADT ([http://ufal.mff.cuni.cz/padt/PADT_1.0; Hajič et al., 2004]), a multi-level
linguistically annotated corpus of Modern Standard Arabic consists of three levels of
annotation – morphological level, analytical level of surface syntax, and tectogrammatical
level describing the linguistic meaning of the sentence. Verb valency is studied on the second
and especially on the third level of annotation, which provide us via dependency trees with
relevant information about all syntactically dependent arguments on particular verb or
verbonominal derivative.
According to the valency theory of FGD also applied in the Czech lexicon VALLEX 2.0, each
verb (lexem) has at least one valency frame. The exact number of these valency frames
depends on the number of meanings of particular verb (lexical units). The valency frame
consists of both obligatory and optional inner participants and obligatory free modifications
([Panevová, 1994]). For expressing relations between a verb and its complementation, FGD
uses different functors. These functors are divided into actants (inner participants) and free
modifications. The entire number of actants is five (Table 1) and there are many different
free modifications which denote various types of adverbial complementation.
Table 1. Types of actants (inner participants of the valency frame) and their examples
illustrated on English sentences ([Lopatková et al., 2006: p. xvi]).
Actant
Meaning
Examples
ACT
actor
ADDR
addressee
PAT
patient
I saw him.
EFF
effect
We made her the secretary.
ORIG
origin
She made a cake from apples.
Peter read a letter.
Peter gave Mary a Book.
We believe that all the valency frames created on Czech and gathered in VALLEX 2.0 (about
6,500 valency frames for about 2,700 lexeme entries) can serve as a useful source of
information for describing the valency in other languages taking into consideration their
natural word order. It is possible to compare these valency frames with relevant data in Arabic
and to preserve them, if they match, or to modify them, if they differ. As an example, the
valency frame of one particular meaning of very frequent Arabic verb qāla (“to say”) can be
mentioned (Table 2). Its valency frame corresponds to the Czech verb říci with the same
meaning.
Table 2. An example of the valency frame of the Arabic verb qāla (“to say“).
qāla
subject
li- (preposition)
c
an (preposition)
object/’inna
(conjunction)
to say

ACT
ADDR (optional)
PAT (optional)
EFF
someone (subject)
to somebody
about something
something/that
Example from the corpus (shortened):
can
about
al-calāqāti
qāla
the-relations [PAT]
he-said [PRED]
al-wazīru
the-minister [ACT]
about the relations the minister said that...
Comment: Optional actant ADDR (addressee) was not realized.
’inna...
that [EFF]
In case of Arabic, verb valency should be studied in close connection with its verbonominal
derivatives – participle (active and passive) and verbal noun (
in traditional Arabic
linguistic terminology). Not only can these bear similar syntactic function as the verb (e.g.
participle as a predicate in nominal sentences), but in many cases they preserve the same or
almost the same valency frame as the verb they are derived from. As an example for
(“to demand”)
preservation the valency frame (Table 3), we can mention the verb
(“demanding”) and verbal noun
and its active participle
(“demanding,
demand”).
(“to demand”)
Table 3. Valency frame of the Arabic verb
to demand
subject
object
bi- (preposition)/’an (conjunction)
ACT
ORIG (optional)
PAT
someone (subject)
of somebody
something/that

Examples from the corpus (shortened)

verb
she-demanded [PRED]
bi-
al-wikālatu
al-
i
the-agency [ACT]
of-the-unions [ORIG]
i...
an-analysis [PAT]
the agency demanded an analysis of the unions...

active participle
...
qijādata
’l-ğajš
bi-’iqāmati
(he) demanding
of-a-leadership [ORIG]
the-army
establishing [PAT]
a-dialog
(he) demanding of the army leadership to enter into a dialog

verbal noun
reaches
an-extent
mutālabati
’l-zawğati
a-demand
of-the-wife [ACT]
bi-’lthe-separation [PAT]
...to the extent that the wife demands to separate
Comment: Optional actant ORIG (origin)was not realized.
The paper will also present some of the tools and methods for querying the syntactic
structures of the treebank. Based on our previous experience, the search tools (used in the
“project”) will include TrEd, Netgraph, and Xaira. TrEd and Netgraph allow structural queries
into the trees. Xaira searches in linear text, but the underlying data for it can include e.g.
annotations of functors and surface syntax (analytical) functions.
As the primary lexical resources, we will use the Czech Vallex 2.0, Hans Wehr’s Dictionary
of Modern Written Arabic, the Czech-Arabic Dictionary, and the ElixirFM lexicon derived
from
the
Buckwalter
lexicon
(allowing
transformations/derivations
between
verbs/participles/verbal nouns).
References
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