Bhattacharya_Lab at SemEval-2023 Task 12: A Transformer-based Language Model for Sentiment Classification for Low Resource African Languages: Nigerian Pidgin and Yoruba

Nathaniel Hughes, Kevan Baker, Aditya Singh, Aryavardhan Singh, Tharalillah Dauda, Sutanu Bhattacharya


Abstract
Sentiment Analysis is an aspect of natural languageprocessing (NLP) that has been a topicof research. While most studies focus on highresourcelanguages with an extensive amountof available data, the study on low-resource languageswith insufficient data needs attention. To address this issue, we propose a transformerbasedmethod for sentiment analysis for lowresourcesAfrican languages, Nigerian Pidginand Yoruba. To evaluate the effectiveness ofour multilingual language models for monolingualsentiment classification, we participated inthe AfriSenti SemEval shared task 2023 competition. On the official e valuation s et, ourgroup (named as Bhattacharya_Lab) ranked1 out of 33 participating groups in the MonolingualSentiment Classification task (i.e., TaskA) for Nigerian Pidgin (i.e., Track 4), and inthe Top 5 among 33 participating groups inthe Monolingual Sentiment Classification taskfor Yoruba (i.e., Track 2) respectively, demonstratingthe potential for our transformer-basedlanguage models to improve sentiment analysisin low-resource languages. Overall, ourstudy highlights the importance of exploringthe potential of NLP in low-resource languagesand the impact of transformer-based multilinguallanguage models in sentiment analysis forthe low-resource African languages, NigerianPidgin and Yoruba.
Anthology ID:
2023.semeval-1.207
Volume:
Proceedings of the 17th International Workshop on Semantic Evaluation (SemEval-2023)
Month:
July
Year:
2023
Address:
Toronto, Canada
Editors:
Atul Kr. Ojha, A. Seza Doğruöz, Giovanni Da San Martino, Harish Tayyar Madabushi, Ritesh Kumar, Elisa Sartori
Venue:
SemEval
SIG:
SIGLEX
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
1502–1507
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2023.semeval-1.207
DOI:
10.18653/v1/2023.semeval-1.207
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Nathaniel Hughes, Kevan Baker, Aditya Singh, Aryavardhan Singh, Tharalillah Dauda, and Sutanu Bhattacharya. 2023. Bhattacharya_Lab at SemEval-2023 Task 12: A Transformer-based Language Model for Sentiment Classification for Low Resource African Languages: Nigerian Pidgin and Yoruba. In Proceedings of the 17th International Workshop on Semantic Evaluation (SemEval-2023), pages 1502–1507, Toronto, Canada. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Bhattacharya_Lab at SemEval-2023 Task 12: A Transformer-based Language Model for Sentiment Classification for Low Resource African Languages: Nigerian Pidgin and Yoruba (Hughes et al., SemEval 2023)
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PDF:
https://aclanthology.org/2023.semeval-1.207.pdf