Related papers: A bifurcation threshold for contact-induced langua…

In this work, we use language modeling to investigate the factors that influence insertional code-switching. Code-switching occurs when a speaker alternates between one language variety (the primary language) and another (the secondary…

The socioeconomic background of people and how they use standard forms of language are not independent, as demonstrated in various sociolinguistic studies. However, the extent to which these correlations may be influenced by the mixing of…

Communicating in natural language is a powerful tool in multi-agent settings, as it enables independent agents to share information in partially observable settings and allows zero-shot coordination with humans. However, most prior works…

We explore which linguistic factors -- at the sentence and token level -- play an important role in influencing language model predictions, and investigate whether these are reflective of results found in humans and human corpora (Gries and…

This study investigates the extent to which Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCCs) capture first language (L1) transfer in extended second language (L2) English speech. Speech samples from Mandarin and American English L1 speakers were…

We propose a model of the speech perception of individual words in the presence of mishearings. This phenomenological approach is based on concepts used in linguistics, and provides a formalism that is universal across languages. We put…

Populations have often been perceived as a structuring component for language to emerge and evolve: the larger the population, the more structured the language. While this observation is widespread in the sociolinguistic literature, it has…

The iterated learning model simulates the transmission of language from generation to generation in order to explore how the constraints imposed by language transmission facilitate the emergence of language structure. Despite each modelled…

One of the most intriguing features of language is its constant change, with ongoing shifts in how meaning is expressed. Despite decades of research, the factors that determine how and why meanings evolve remain only partly understood.…

Any piece of knowledge is usually expressed in one or a handful of natural languages on the web or in any large corpus. Large Language Models (LLMs) act as a bridge by acquiring knowledge from a source language and making it accessible when…

Human languages evolve continuously, and a puzzling problem is how to reconcile the apparent robustness of most of the deep linguistic structures we use with the evidence that they undergo possibly slow, yet ceaseless, changes. Is the state…

We examine the language capabilities of language models (LMs) from the critical perspective of human language acquisition. Building on classical language development theories, we propose a three-stage framework to assess the abilities of…

People have long hoped for a conversational system that can assist in real-life situations, and recent progress on large language models (LLMs) is bringing this idea closer to reality. While LLMs are often impressive in performance, their…

Phase transitions have been proposed as the origin of emergent abilities in large language models (LLMs), where new capabilities appear abruptly once models surpass critical thresholds of scale. Prior work, such as that of Wei et al.,…

Language change involves the competition between alternative linguistic forms (1). The spontaneous evolution of these forms typically results in monotonic growths or decays (2, 3) like in winner-take-all attractor behaviors. In the case of…

Large language models (LLMs) have emerged as powerful tools for supporting second language acquisition, particularly in simulating interactive dialogues for speaking practice. However, adapting the language difficulty of LLM-generated…

Language change is influenced by many factors, but often starts from synchronic variation, where multiple linguistic patterns or forms coexist, or where different speech communities use language in increasingly different ways. Besides…

Grammatical rules in natural languages are often characterized by exceptions. How do language learners learn these exceptions to otherwise general patterns? Here, we study this question through the case study of English passivization. While…

This study explores F0 entrainment in second language (L2) English speech imitation during an Alternating Reading Task (ART). Participants with Italian, French, and Slovak native languages imitated English utterances, and their F0…

For the longest time, languages have been competing for their speakers to survive, although this problem has only recently gained rigorous attention from the scholarly community as a means to address the risk of losing speakers for the…