My main academic interests concern syntactic structure, and the division of labour between syntax and semantics. I've focused on various topics, including the grammar of coordination, ellipsis phenomena, and syntactic discontinuities. My work is couched on precise construction- and constraint-based theories of grammar, and aims to be psychologically plausible. One of my main research goals is to explore finer-grained aspects of syntax via controlled experimental research, and to explain away certain stipulations as consequence of performance effects. Other areas of interest include parsing strategies, grammar implementation, dynamic/underspecfied semantics, and cognitively plausible computational models of human language processing.

• Chaves, Rui P. (2008). "Linearization-based word-part ellipsis". Linguistics and Philosophy.
  
  
• Ito, Chizuru and R. P. Chaves (2008). "Apparent Non-Constituent Coordination in Japanese". In Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, pp. 95–115. Keihanna, Japan.
  

• Chaves, R. P. and Denis Paperno (2007). "On the Russian Hybrid Coordination Construction". In Stefan Müller (Edt.), Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, pp. 46–64. Stanford University.

• Chaves, R. P. (2007) "Dynamic Model Checking for Discourse Representation Structures with Pluralities". In J. Geertzen, E. Thijsse, H. Bunt, and A. Schiffrin (Eds.), 7th International Workshop on Computational Semantics, pp. 28–40. Tilburg University, The Netherlands.

• Chaves, R. P. (2006) "Coordination of Unlikes without Unlike Categories". In Stefan Müller (Edt.), Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Varna, Bulgaria. pp. 102–122, Stanford: CSLI Publications.

• Amaro, R., R. P. Chaves, P. Marrafa, and S. Mendes (2006) "Enriching Wordnets with new Relations and with Event and Argument Structures". In Alexander Gelbukh (edt.), Seventh International Conference on Intelligent Text Processing and Computational Linguistics, Mexico City. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 3878, pp.28–40. Springer-Verlag.

• Chaves, R. P. (2005) "A Linearization-based Approach to Gapping". In G. Jäger, P. Monachesi, G. Penn, and S. Wintner (Eds.), FG-MOL 2005: The 10th conference on Formal Grammar and The 9th Meeting on Mathematics of Language, pp. 207-220, University of Edinburgh, Scotland.

• Chaves, R. P. (2005) "DRT and Underspecification of Plural Ambiguities". In H. Bunt, J. Geertzen and E. Thijse (Eds.), Proceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Computational Semantics, pp. 78-89. Tilburg, The Netherlands.