Construction of Computational Lexicon for Malay Language

Abstract

This paper focuses on construction of computational lexicon for Malay language that involves computational study and the use of electronic lexicons. To construct the lexicons, it includes a study on morphological arrangement of Malay affixation process which comprises of prefixes, suffixes, circumfixes and infixes with the intention of constructing a collection of new Malay lexicons or words that will be automatically constructed from a single root word. This research conducts experiments on 2101 unique Malay root words found in the Malay translated Quranic documents that are later experimented with Malay affixation rules using the affixed words analyser. Numerous new words are constructed from a single root word by adding 52 affix rules to the root word. Finally, each new word is compared with Malay dictionary to ensure whether it is truly a new generated Malay word. Results from this analysis open opportunity to construct new Malay word variant to enrich the Malay lexicon.