AraMIP: Extending MIPVU Towards Metaphor Identification in Arabic

Mandar Marathe, Manar Ali, Sara Nabhani, Raia Abu Ahmad, Ibrahim Baroud, Omar Momen


Abstract
Metaphor research has gained increasing attention due to its relevance to linguistic creativity, language use, cognitive processes, and related areas. While many efforts have been devoted to metaphor identification and annotation in English and other languages, Arabic remains under-resourced in this area. In this work, we propose the Arabic Metaphor Identification Procedure (AraMIP), a novel guideline for Arabic metaphor annotation. AraMIP builds on the widely used Metaphor Identification Procedure Vrije Universiteit (MIPVU) framework, incorporating adaptations that account for the language-specific properties of Arabic. We distinguish three major types of Arabic figurative language: isti‘āra (metaphor), kināya (metonymy/indirect expression), and tashbīh (simile) and annotate a pilot dataset of 300 sentences (5277 words). Our analysis reveals key challenges specific to Arabic, including morphological complexity, inconsistencies in dictionary sense ordering, and the absence of standardized contextual materials for annotators. This work contributes a first step toward standardized Arabic figurative instances and facilitates the development of larger annotated resources, thereby supporting future research on figurative language in Arabic.
Anthology ID:
2026.arabicnlp-main.23
Volume:
Proceedings of The Fourth Arabic Natural Language Processing Conference
Month:
October
Year:
2026
Address:
Budapest, Hungary
Editors:
Muhammad Abdul-Mageed, Tamer Elsayed, Houda Bouamor, Samhaa El-Beltagy, Hend Al-Khalifa, Ahmed Abdelali, AbdelRahim Elmadany, Abdellah El Mekki, Kareem Darwish, Sakhar Alkhereyf, Hamzah Luqman, Salam Khalifa, Samar Magdy, Zaid Alyafeai, Injy Hamed, Wajdi Zaghouani, Imed Zitouni
Venue:
ArabicNLP
SIG:
SIGARAB
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
325–339
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2026.arabicnlp-main.23/
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Mandar Marathe, Manar Ali, Sara Nabhani, Raia Abu Ahmad, Ibrahim Baroud, and Omar Momen. 2026. AraMIP: Extending MIPVU Towards Metaphor Identification in Arabic. In Proceedings of The Fourth Arabic Natural Language Processing Conference, pages 325–339, Budapest, Hungary. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
AraMIP: Extending MIPVU Towards Metaphor Identification in Arabic (Marathe et al., ArabicNLP 2026)
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PDF:
https://aclanthology.org/2026.arabicnlp-main.23.pdf