Week of Oct 20

LangCog 

The next LangCog meeting will be Tuesday, 10/21 from 5:30-7:00pm, in William James Hall, Room 1550. The speaker is Sophie Hao (Boston University), and the title and abstract of her talk can be found below. You can find the schedule for the remainder of the semester on the LangCog website. 

Title: Towards a Linguistics of Large Language Models

Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) are the most successful technique ever developed for generating natural language text; but they are based on principles that are fundamentally at odds with generativist assumptions. In this talk, I argue that LLMs have a “linguistic competence” that is similar to, but not the same as, human language. I make the case that investigating LLM language on its own terms, without measuring LLMs against a human standard, can lead to new perspectives on traditional theoretical debates. I conclude the talk by showing how the ongoing development and proliferation of LLM technologies provide opportunities for linguists of all subfields to make broad social impact.