CommonMorph: Participatory Morphological Documentation Platform
Organizations: The University of Melbourne · University of Zurich
Abstract
Collecting and annotating morphological data present significant challenges, requiring linguistic expertise, methodological rigour, and substantial resources. These barriers are particularly acute for low-resource languages and varieties. To accelerate this process, we introduce CommonMorph, a comprehensive platform that streamlines morphological data collection development through a three-tiered approach: expert linguistic definition, contributor elicitation, and community validation. The platform minimises manual work by incorporating active learning, annotation suggestions, and tools to import and adapt materials from related languages. It accommodates diverse morphological systems, including fusional, agglutinative, and root-and-pattern morphologies. Its open-source design and UniMorph-compatible outputs ensure accessibility and interoperability with NLP tools. Our platform is accessible at https://common-morph.com, offering a replicable model for preserving linguistic diversity through collaborative technology.
Figures & tables
| Suggestion Model | Hawrami (Tewêle) | Kurdish (Sine) | Farsi (Tehran) | Turkish (Standard) | Spanish (Spain) | Arabic (Standard) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Linguist patterns | 12.33 | 1.39 | 0.86 | 31.74 | 0.82 | 6.62 |
| Linguist patterns + morphophonolgy | 5.78 | 0.74 | 0.85 | 2.97 | 0.82 | 2.24 |
| NN trained on 100 samples | 48.41 | 54.23 | 37.25 | 23.31 | 20.98 | 41.93 |
| NN trained on 500 samples | 15.13 | 29.12 | 23.63 | 11.83 | 7.18 | 8.45 |
| NN trained on 1000 samples | 7.88 | 27.37 | 54.02 | 3.33 | 5.91 | 6.40 |
| NN trained on 2000 samples | 6.46 | 14.36 | 24.22 | 4.68 | 1.14 | 2.72 |
| Linguists | Speakers | |||
| Metric | Mean | SD | Mean | SD |
| User Learning Time | 17.3 min | 2.5 | 8.7 min | 3.2 |
| Contributing Time | 1.0 hr | 2.5 | 4.1 hr | 9.2 |
| Pedagogical Score | 3.7/5 | 1.5 | 4.7/5 | 0.5 |
| Efficiency Score | 4.3/5 | 1.1 | 4.7/5 | 0.5 |
| Satisfaction Score | 4.7/5 | 0.5 | 4.7/5 | 0.5 |
Appendix figures & tables1 asset
Supplementary material from the paper’s appendix.
Appendix
| Placeholder | Replaces with |
|---|---|
| <LEMMA> | hênan |
| <STEM1> | hêna |
| <STEM2> | hên |
| <SAMPLE.1.LEMMA> | girtin |
| <SAMPLE.1.STEM.1> | girt |
| <SAMPLE.1.STEM.2> | gir |
Low-Resource Language Processing
Low-resource language processing builds and evaluates language technologies for languages with limited data, tools, or digital representation.
See all 565 papers