Challenges of language technologies for the indigenous languages of the Americas

TLDR

Indigenous languages of the Americas are highly diverse yet have received little technological attention. The paper reviews research, digital resources, and NLP systems for these languages, identifies key challenges and research questions, and urges further NLP work in the Americas. The authors conduct a review of research, digital resources, and existing NLP systems targeting indigenous languages of the Americas.

Abstract

Indigenous languages of the American continent are highly diverse. However, they have received little attention from the technological perspective. In this paper, we review the research, the digital resources and the available NLP systems that focus on these languages. We present the main challenges and research questions that arise when distant languages and low-resource scenarios are faced. We would like to encourage NLP research in linguistically rich and diverse areas like the Americas.