Journal of Social Science and Human Research Studies (JSSHRS)

Arabic Compatible Word Analysers for Corpus Research: An Affordance Based Critical Review and Evaluation Framework

Razak, Zainur Rijal Abdul, Samah, Rosni

19 October 2026 · Vol. 2, Issue 10, pp. 1866-1873

DOI: 10.65150/EP-jsshrs/V2E10/2026-08

Abstract

Arabic corpus researchers need software that can transform written text into linguistically interpretable evidence. However, displaying Arabic characters, retrieving orthographic words and identifying morphological units are different capabilities, and their conflation can obscure the conditions under which corpus findings remain defensible. This article develops an affordance based critical review of Arabic compatible word analysers through a synthesis of published software studies and current developer documentation. It examines AntConc, WordSmith Tools, LancsBox, Sketch Engine, aConCorde, the Buckwalter Arabic Morphological Analyzer, the Standard Arabic Morphological Analyzer, MADAMIRA and CAMeL Tools. The review draws selectively on developer documentation, resource catalogues and foundational publications rather than reporting an experimental benchmark or systematic review. Its central problem concerns the relationship between documented software capabilities and valid analytical action in Arabic corpus research. The proposed framework distinguishes script access, linguistic representation, contextual retrieval, statistical comparison and reproducibility, with researcher competence and corpus variety treated as conditions of affordance actualisation. The analysis indicates that concordancers and morphological processors offer complementary capabilities rather than interchangeable solutions. It proposes a layered workflow and a controlled evaluation design through which future studies can test retrieval accuracy, segmentation decisions and the stability of corpus interpretations. The contribution is a theoretically grounded basis for software selection and evaluation that connects technical functions to research questions without assuming that tool availability establishes analytical validity.

Keywords: Arabic corpus linguistics, word analysers, affordance theory, concordance, morphological analysis, reproducibility

Read the full text on Journal of Social Science and Human Research Studies →The full peer-reviewed article and PDF are hosted on the journal's site (the version of record).

Razak, Zainur Rijal Abdul, Samah, & Rosni (2026). Arabic Compatible Word Analysers for Corpus Research: An Affordance Based Critical Review and Evaluation Framework. Journal of Social Science and Human Research Studies, 2(10), 1866-1873. https://doi.org/10.65150/EP-jsshrs/V2E10/2026-08

@article{Razak2026,
  title   = {Arabic Compatible Word Analysers for Corpus Research: An Affordance Based Critical Review and Evaluation Framework},
  author  = {Razak and Zainur Rijal Abdul and Samah and Rosni},
  journal = {Journal of Social Science and Human Research Studies},
  year    = {2026},
  volume  = {2},
  number  = {10},
  pages   = {1866-1873},
  doi     = {10.65150/EP-jsshrs/V2E10/2026-08},
  url     = {https://doi.org/10.65150/EP-jsshrs/V2E10/2026-08}
}

← Back to all articles