Word Segmentation for Akkadian Cuneiform

Akkadian Word Segmentation Timo Homburg M.Sc., Dr. Christian Chiarcos Institute for Computer Science Goethe University, Robert-Mayer-Str. 10, 60325 Frankfurt am Main, Germany timo.homburg@gmx.de, chiarcos@em.uni-frankfurt.de Abstract We present experiments on word segmentation for Akkadian cuneiform, an ancient writing system and a language used for about 3 millennia in the ancient Near East. To our best knowledge, this is the first study of this kind applied to either the Akkadian language or the cuneiform writing system. As a logosyllabic writing system, cuneiform structurally resembles Eastern Asian writing systems, so, we employ word segmentation algorithms originally developed for Chinese and Japanese. We describe results of rule-based algorithms, dictionary-based algorithms, statistical and machine learning approaches. Our results may indicate possible promising steps in cuneiform word segmentation that can create and improve natural language processing in this area. Keywords: Assyriology, Cuneiform, Akkadian, Chinese, Word Segmentation, Machine Learning 1. Introduction Word segmentation is the most elementary task in natural language processing of written language. In most alpha- betical writing systems, this task is commonly referred to as tokenization and can be easily solved through the inter- pretation of orthographical markers for word and sentence boundaries, e.g., white spaces. Where these are lacking, however, word segmentation is a challenging task, a classi- cal – and successfully addressed – problem in logographic writing systems like Chinese and logosyllabic writing sys- tems like Japanese. Here, we describe experiments on cuneiform, a writing sys- tem developed in the 4th m. BCE in Mesopotamia sub- sequently applied to various Semitic, Indo-European and isolate languages in the region. As a logosyllabic writing system, it shares important structural characteristics with Chinese and Japanese (Ikeda, 2007), so that we evaluate word segmentation methods successfully applied to these languages. However, these languages are unrelated to those of the Ancient Near East, so that future research will focus on developing aspects specific to languages with cuneiform writing. As a writing system, cuneiform poses a number of unique challenges: • The same character, e.g., , can be read as a logo- graph or as a syllable, as the logograph GURU ‘young man’ or with its phonological reading as a syllabic sign. • As a syllabic sign, a single character can have multi- ple different readings, e.g., grounded in the possible Sumerian pronounciation(s) of the logograph, or the pronounciation of their Akkadian translations, may be read as dan/tan (from Akk. dannu ‘strong, power- ful’), kal (from Sum. kal ‘rare, valuable’ and kalag ‘strong’), rib (from Sum. rib ‘outstanding, strong’), etc. (Tinney and others, 2006; Lauffenburger, nd; Borger, 2004). • CVC syllables (e.g., dan) can be as a pair of CV-VC characters ( da-an) or with a single CVC character ( dan) (Gelb, 1957, p.8, Da-an--ri vs. Dan-r-ri). We primarily consider the Akkadian language, the domi- nant language of the Ancient Near East from the 3rd to the 1st millennium BCE. Originally spoken in Mesopotamia, it became the lingua franca in the Near East during the 2nd m. BCE, with an extensive body of material comparable only to corpus …

Content truncated to 500 words