ML-Ask: Open Source Affect Analysis Software for Textual Input in Japanese

We present ML-Ask – the first Open Source Affect Analysis system for textual input in Japanese. ML-Ask analyses the contents of an input (e.g., a sentence) and annotates it with information regarding the contained general emotive expressions, specific emotional words, valence-activation dimensions of overall expressed affect, and particular emotion types expressed with their respective expressions. ML-Ask also incorporates the Contextual Valence Shifters model for handling negation in sentences to deal with grammatically expressible shifts in the conveyed valence. The system, designed to work mainly under Linux and MacOS, can be used for research on, or applying the techniques of Affect Analysis within the framework Japanese language. It can also be used as an experimental baseline for specific research in Affect Analysis, and as a practical tool for written contents annotation.   Funding statement: This research has been supported by: a Research Grant from the Nissan Science Foundation (years 2009–2010), The GCOE Program founded by Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (years 2009–2010), (JSPS) KAKENHI Grant-in-Aid for JSPS Fellows (Project Number: 22-00358) (years 2010–2012), (JSPS) KAKENHI Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (Project Number: 24600001) (years 2012–2015), (JSPS) KAKENHI Grant-in-Aid for Research Activity Start-up (Project Number: 25880003) (years 2013–2015), and (JSPS) KAKENHI Grant-in-Aid for Encouragement of Young Scientists (B) (Project Number: 15K16044) (years 2015-present, project estimated to end in March 2018).