The study of the interaction between syntax and information structure has attracted a great deal of attention since the publication of foundational works on this subject such as Enric Vallduvi's (1992) The Informational Component and Knud Lambrecht's (1994) Information Structure and Sentence Form. The book inserts itself in this contemporary interest by providing a collection of articles on different aspects of the syntax-pragmatics interface in the indigenous languages of The Americas. The first chapter provides a brief introduction of the some of the basic descriptive issues addressed in them, and of some of the theoretical tools that have been developed to analyze them. The reader finds articles that focus mostly on empirical issues, while others are mostly oriented to theoretical issues. Diverse theoretical approaches are addressed, including Minimalism, Optimality-theoretic syntax, and Meaning-Text Theory. The volume includes articles on the following topics: the grammatical means to encode pragmatic notions in Tariana (A. Aikhenvald); the relation between clause structure and information structure in Lushootseed (D. Beck); the split distribution of null subjects in Shipibo (J. Camacho and J. Elias-Ulloa); the syntactic structure of left-peripheral discourse-related functions in Kuikuro (B. Franchetto and M. Santos), an agglutinative and head final language; word order and focus patterns in Yaqui (L. Guerrero and V. Belloro); SVO and topicalization in Yucatec Maya (R. Gutierrez-Bravo and J. Monforte); the structure of the left-periphery in Karaja (Maia) and the interaction between the wh-words and polarity sensitivity in Southern Quechua (L. Sanchez).

Embeddings have undoubtedly been one of the most influential research areas in Natural Language Processing (NLP). Encoding information into a low-dimensional vector representation, which is easily integrable in modern machine learning models, has played a central role in the development of NLP. Embedding techniques initially focused on words, but the attention soon started to shift to other forms: from graph structures, such as knowledge bases, to other types of textual content, such as sentences and documents. This book provides a high-level synthesis of the main embedding techniques in NLP, in the broad sense. The book starts by explaining conventional word vector space models and word embeddings (e.g., Word2Vec and GloVe) and then moves to other types of embeddings, such as word sense, sentence and document, and graph embeddings. The book also provides an overview of recent developments in contextualized representations (e.g., ELMo and BERT) and explains their potential in NLP. Throughout the book, the reader can find both essential information for understanding a certain topic from scratch and a broad overview of the most successful techniques developed in the literature.

Models of theoretical linguistics now emphasize the meeting points, or interfaces, between different aspects of our language capacity. Syntactic operations include structure-building, checking long-distance relationships between units, and connecting alternative word orders. This volume presents a collection of original studies that explore the mapping between these operations and other language-related areas such as word meanings, discourse contexts, the construction of meaning for larger units, and the alternative expressions of word order. It differs from previous traditional research on interfaces by bringing together studies and analyses from a range of languages, using monolingual varieties that include second language phenomena. Case studies of different types of interfaces, as well as studies based on lesser known sets of linguistic data, provide important examples that propose a new view of the connections between syntactic processes and other areas of grammar.

Written in Spanish by an experienced instructor, this textbook introduces students with no prior background in linguistics to the syntax of Spanish, exploring the building blocks of complex linguistic expressions. Variations across Spanish are highlighted and varieties spoken by bilinguals are included. New concepts are clearly presented through a gradual progression from simpler to more complex concepts, with definitions of key terms highlighted in boxes. Recent theoretical developments are presented in a theory-neutral framework, offering students a balanced perspective. Chapter learning objectives, numerous detailed examples, and summaries, enable students to build a solid knowledge and understanding of syntactic ideas from scratch. Both advanced and introductory exercises are included in every chapter, allowing students at all levels to put concepts into practice. Further reading suggestions, and expansion boxes highlight more complex developments, providing students with a platform for further exploration. This is an essential resource for introductory courses on Spanish syntax and linguistics.

This volume presents a comprehensive representation of the papers delivered at the fourteenth West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics held at the University of Southern California. Topics range from child language to the transitivity of verbs, determiners and context sets. The languages covered range from Cree to Hindi to German.

This volume presents a comprehensive representation of the papers delivered at the fourteenth West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics held at the University of Southern California. Topics range from child language to the transitivity of verbs, determiners and context sets. The languages covered range from Cree to Hindi to German.