Newton Kitonga Nganda 008418 Assessing the Applicability of Predictive Text Entry for Agglutinative Languages Using Unsupervised

Morphological Segmentation on Kiswahilli Language Background Predictive text completion is technology that extends the traditional auto-completion and text replacement techniques (Wong, 2010). It helps to reduce key strokes needed in text input in mobile devices including mobile phones and in accessibility technologies. Predictive text makes efficient use of fewer device keys to input writing into a text message, an e-mail, an address book, a calendar, and the like. Problem Statement The subject of predictive text entry has been extensively studied, but the studies have mainly concentrated on predictive text entry of English (Miikka, Krister & Mirka, 2011). Because of the limited morphological complexity of English, these approaches have usually been able to rely on an extensive dictionary along with word frequencies, since a sufficiently large English dictionary almost eliminates the problem of outof-vocabulary (OOV) words. Kiswahilli is an agglutinative language, meaning most words are formed by joining morphemes together. Naenda Kiswahilli term translated in English is I am going. Naenda is agglutinative because it combines more than one unit of meaning in one word. Na is past present continuous tense and enda is a verb. This agglutinative nature of Kiswahilli and other Bantu languages makes it very hard to apply normal predictive text mechanism that is normally applied on English. Systems for predictive text entry on ambiguous keyboards typically rely on dictionaries with word frequencies which are used to suggest the most likely words matching user input. This approach is insufficient for agglutinative languages, where morphological phenomena increase the rate of out-ofvocabulary words (Miikka, Krister & Mirka, 2011). There are no effective predictive text mechanisms for Bantu languages in African, especially for Kiswahilli language. With the successful adoption of mobile phones in Kenya, most of the phones only have predictive text for English. Kenya primarily a Kiswahilli speaking nation, meaning most Kenyans type messages in Kiswahilli. It is important to have predictive text for Kiswahilli that will allow for better efficiency in typing messages on mobile devices in Kiswahilli speaking languages. Objectives 1. Implement a working prototype for predictive text using the unsupervised morphological segmentation paper. 2. Demonstrate that using unsupervised morphological segmentation can be used to apply predictive text in Kiswahilli language 3. Test the improvement in typing speed for Kiswahilli messages from the prototype References Wong, F. (2010). A Predictive Text Completion Software in Python Miikka S, Krister L & Mirka H. (2011). Predictive Text Entry for Agglutinative Languages Using Unsupervised Morphological Segmentation

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