I mean semantics broadly: attention heads that were sensitive to syntax were also sensitive to world knowledge/plausibility.
Definitely can't take information structure out of syntax either
you can't take the semantics out of the syntax
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1...
@ibandlank.bsky.social
Constructions = grammar in action: social, rhetorical, meaningful. Excited for this conference, hosted by none other than @randyallenharris.bsky.social!
fascinating
And big winners from the goon squads are:
Idan Blank (UCLA, psych) makes the complex intuitive
if you want to learn how LLMs work, watch👇
newly posted to YouTube (no ads)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGMn...
when will chicks, dogs or mice show that they prefer Determiner Numeral Noun word order already
another great paper from @mh-christiansen.bsky.social, showing that non-constituents* can be primed
It's more evidence that traditional linguists were mistaken to believe memory was in short supply:
Human memory is compressed, clustered, implicit and vast
with sound on 😀
"We are out there in every place they are, showing them that every person in this city is one of our own, that there is no such thing as other people’s children, that collectively we are not afraid of staring them in the eye," @erikhane.bsky.social writes from Minneapolis.
..what LLMs have learned when they learn language, the inappropriateness of parrot metaphors, the (non)autonomy of syntax, and the sheer power of pattern matching (construction grammars had it right!)
Pattern matching is not an alternative to “true” thinking, it is its key ingredient.
This is stunning work!
Walz: "What's happening in MN defies belief. News reports simply don't do justice to the level of chaos & disruption & trauma the federal govt is raining down... This long ago stopped being a matter of immigration enforcement. Instead, it's a campaign of organized brutality against the people of MN"
Venezuela's state apparatus appears very much intact and independent you can't conquer another country with a speech act
Explore this gift article from The New York Times. You can read it for free without a subscription. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/04/o...
But her email, his kid’s laptop, and Camera
New book! I have written a book, called Syntax: A cognitive approach, published by MIT Press.
This is open access; MIT Press will post a link soon, but until then, the book is available on my website:
tedlab.mit.edu/tedlab_websi...
LMs appear to be *better* at analogies than people are... watch for @ellaqiawenliu.bsky.social, forthcoming
also Hofstadter '25 may want a word with H-2001 (see The Case that AI is Thinking, New Yorker)
at a party last night, someone was complaining that LMs only
'regurgitate info, don't understand anything...like for example, they can't come up with Einstein's theory of relativity'
The room:
I feel like people who underestimate LM's understanding overestimate their own
Review starts 12/1 (rolling basis): Open-rank (tenure-track/tenured) positions, cognitive psychology, cognitive neuroscience, behavioral neuroscience, Psych. + Brain Sci., Johns Hopkins University pbs.jhu.edu/about/jobs/
Less than 3 weeks to submit an abstract for ICCG14! please pass it on: iccg14.oa-event.com June 4-7, 2026
I'm so sorry to share that Friedemann Pulvermüller, brilliant neuroscientist, has passed. He gave Embodiment ideas legs and worked tirelessly on treatments for stroke victims during his storied career. His kindness and wry humor made him sparkle.
Gift article for any uniformed friends or family: experts overwhelmingly agree that the apparent increase in autism in USA is due to broader inclusion criteria and diagnoses. It is NOT caused by tylenol or vaccines
www.nytimes.com/2025/09/23/o...
New paper: We argue that linearization in language production is a foraging process, with speakers navigating semantic and spatial clusters. Lead author: Karina Tachihara, former UC Davis postdoc, now faculty at UIUC!
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
This was a long time ago! Summaries today are shockingly good!
But I was rattled by the *snake oil* multiple high-positioned people were promoting and the lack of even a cursory glance at it by people inside the company
It was shockingly idiotic:
It simply copied the last paragraph of any article, verbatim, and called that a 'summary'
it ignored paragraphs labeled 'abstract'
if an article ended with/ 'the author lives in Santa Barbara with his dog Barnacle' that was the 'summary'
a peek inside a famous software company in the news today:
a long time ago I was hired to assess a new program that I was told could summarize any article
Contacts there hailed it as 'amazing, ground-breaking'
