Semantic Relations Extraction and Ontology Learning from Arabic Texts—A Survey

Abstract

Semantic relations are the building blocks of the Ontologies and any modern knowledge representation system. Extracting semantic relations from the text is one of the most significant and challenging phases in the Ontology learning process. It is essential in all Ontology learning phases starting from building the Ontology from scratch, down to populating and enriching the existing Ontologies. It is challenging, on the other hand, as it requires dealing with natural language text, which represents various challenges especially for syntactically ambiguous languages such as Arabic. In this paper, we present a comprehensive survey of Arabic Semantic Relation Extraction and Arabic Ontology learning research areas. We study Arabic Ontology learning in general while focusing on Arabic Semantic Relation Extraction particularly, as being the most significant, yet challenging task in the Ontology learning process. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that addresses the process of Arabic Semantic Relation Extraction from the Ontology learning perspective. We review the conducted researches in both areas. For each research the used technique is illustrated, the limitations and the positive aspects are clarified.