Related papers: Linguistically Grounded Models of Language Change
This paper investigates the knowledge of language models from the perspective of Bayesian epistemology. We explore how language models adjust their confidence and responses when presented with evidence with varying levels of informativeness…
This chapter critically examines the potential contributions of modern language models to theoretical linguistics. Despite their focus on engineering goals, these models' ability to acquire sophisticated linguistic knowledge from mere…
We give a overview of stochastic models of evolution that have found applications in genetics, ecology and linguistics for an audience of nonspecialists, especially statistical physicists. In particular, we focus mostly on neutral models in…
Programming languages are engineered languages that allow to instruct a machine and share algorithmic information; they have a great influence on the society since they underlie almost every information technology artefact, and they are at…
Languages emerge and change over time at the population level though interactions between individual speakers. It is, however, hard to directly observe how a single speaker's linguistic innovation precipitates a population-wide change in…
This survey provides an overview of the evolution of visually grounded models of spoken language over the last 20 years. Such models are inspired by the observation that when children pick up a language, they rely on a wide range of…
Language models can produce fluent, grammatical text. Nonetheless, some maintain that language models don't really learn language and also that, even if they did, that would not be informative for the study of human learning and processing.…
We review the task of aligning simple models for language dynamics with relevant empirical data, motivated by the fact that this is rarely attempted in practice despite an abundance of abstract models. We propose that one way to meet this…
Computational modeling plays an essential role in the study of language emergence. It aims to simulate the conditions and learning processes that could trigger the emergence of a structured language within a simulated controlled…
The evolution of language has been a hotly debated subject with contradicting hypotheses and unreliable claims. Drawing from signalling games, dynamic population mechanics, machine learning and algebraic topology, we present a method for…
In the principles-and-parameters framework, the structural features of languages depend on parameters that may be toggled on or off, with a single parameter often dictating the status of multiple features. The implied covariance between…
Human history leaves fingerprints in human languages. Little is known over language evolution and its study is of great importance. Here, we construct a simple stochastic model and compare its results to statistical data of real languages.…
This chapter examines current developments in linguistic theory and methods, focusing on the increasing integration of computational, cognitive, and evolutionary perspectives. We highlight four major themes shaping contemporary linguistics:…
Recently, computational modelling became a very important research tool that enables us to study problems that for decades evaded scientific analysis. Evolutionary systems are certainly examples of such problems: they are composed of many…
Grammatical forms are said to evolve via two main mechanisms. These are, respectively, the `descent' mechanism, where current forms can be seen to have descended (albeit with occasional modifications) from their roots in ancient languages,…
This paper argues that large language models have a valuable scientific role to play in serving as scientific models of public languages. Linguistic study should not only be concerned with the cognitive processes behind linguistic…
We argue that language models (LMs) have strong potential as investigative tools for probing the distinction between possible and impossible natural languages and thus uncovering the inductive biases that support human language learning. We…
Contact between languages has the potential to transmit vocabulary and other language features; however, this does not always happen. Here, an iterated learning model is used to examine, in a simple way, the resistance of languages to…
Discovering and quantifying the drivers of language change is a major challenge. Hypotheses about causal factors proliferate, but are difficult to rigorously test. Here we ask a simple question: can 20th Century changes in English English…
A major target of linguistics and cognitive science has been to understand what class of learning systems can acquire the key structures of natural language. Until recently, the computational requirements of language have been used to argue…