Transducer Minimization and Information Compression for NooJ Dictionaries

In this paper, we describe the use of an incremental construction method of minimal, acyclic, deterministic FST. The approach consists in constructing a transducer in a single step by adding new strings one by one and minimizing the resultant automaton incrementally. Then, we present a new method to encode the morphological information associated with the dictionary entries. The new encoding unifies a large number of word forms' analyses, thus reducing the number of terminal states of the dictionary's FST, that triggers a more efficient minimization process. Finally, we present experimental results on the FST that represents the Arabic dictionary.