Deciphering language processing in the human brain through LLM representations

The main point of contention is their statement that "grammar follows language" which, in the Chomsky sense, is false: (universal) grammar/syntax describes the human language faculty (the internal language system) from which external languages (English, French, sign language) are derived, so (external) languages follow grammar.

I don't see how you can say his language ability is much higher than his general problem solving ability if you don't know what proficiency of language he is capable of reaching.

When you are learning say English as a second language, there are proficiency tiers you get assigned when you get tested - A1, A2 etc

If he's learning all these languages but maxing out at A2 then his language ability is only slightly better than his general problem solving ability.

This is the point i'm trying to drive home. Maybe it's because i've been learning a second language for a couple years and so i see it more clearly but saying 'he learned x language' says absolutely nothing. People say that to mean anything from 'well he can ask for the toilet' to 'could be mistaken for a native'.

>I don't know what you are trying to say then.

The brain has over millions of years been tuned to speak languages with certain structures. Deviating from these structures is more taxing for the brain. True statement. But how on earth does that imply the brain isn't 'thinking' for the structures it is used to ? Do you say you did not think for question 1 just because question 2 was more difficult ?

There is plenty evidence for to suggest this

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27135040/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25644408/

https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110346916...

And research on syntactic surprisal—where more predictable syntactic structures are processed faster—shows a strong correlation between the probability of a syntactic continuation and reading times.

>In the case of language you observe that there is structure dependence, you ask why it's that way and not another (like linear order) and try to come up with an explanation. You are trying to suggest that the observation that language has structure dependence is like seeing an image of an object in a cloud formation: an imagined mental projection that doesn't have any meaningful underlying explanation.

No I'm suggesting that all you're doing here is cooking up some very nice fiction like Newton did when he proposed his model of gravity. Grammar does not even fit into rule based hierarchies all that well. That's why there are a million strange exceptions to almost every 'rule'. Exceptions that have no sensible explanations beyond, 'well this is just how it's used' because of course that's what happens when you try to break down an inherently probabilistic process into rigid rules.

I'm not sure what this is supposed to show? If I can predict what you are going to say so what. I can predict you are going to pick something up too if you are looking at it and start moving your arm. So what?

The third paper looks like a similar argument. As far as I can tell neither paper 1 or 2 propose a probabilistic model for language. 1 talks about how certain language features are acquired faster with more exposure (that isn't inconsistent with a deterministic grammar). I believe 2 is the same.

> No I'm suggesting that all you're doing here is cooking up some very nice fiction like Newton did when he proposed his model of gravity.

Absolutely bonkers to describe Newton's model of gravity as "fiction". In that sense every scientific breakthrough is fiction: Bohr's model of the atom is fiction (because it didn't use quantum effects), Einstein's gravity will be fiction too when physics is unified with quantum gravity. No sane person uses the word "fiction" to describe any of this, it's just scientific refinement: we go from good models to better ones, patching up holes in our understanding, which is an unceasing process. It would be great if we could have a Newton-level "fictitious" breakthrough in language.

> Grammar does not even fit into rule based hierarchies all that well. That's why there are a million strange exceptions to almost every 'rule'. Exceptions that have no sensible explanations beyond, 'well this is just how it's used' because of course that's what happens when you try to break down an inherently probabilistic process into rigid rules.

No one is saying grammar has been solved, people are trying to figure out all the things that we don't understand.

In what sense? I don't see how it tells you anything if you have the sentence "The cat ___ " and then you expect a verb like "went" but you could get a relative clause like "that caught the mouse". The sentence is interpreted deterministically not by what what follows after a fragment might contain but what it does contain. If you are more "surprised" by the latter it doesn't tell you that the process is not deterministic.

> Ok ? This is very interesting. Do you seriously think this prediction right now isn't probabilistic ? You estimate not from rigid rules but past experience that it's likely I will pick it up. What if i push it off the table ? You think that isn't possible. What if i grab the gun in my bag while you're distracted and shoot you instead?

I think you are confusing multiple things. I can predict actions and words, that doesn't mean sentence parsing/production is probabilistic (I'm not even sure exactly what a person might mean by that, especially with respect to production) nor does it mean arm movement is.

> "All models are wrong. Some are useful" - George Box. There's nothing insane with calling a spade a spade. It is fiction and many academics do view it in such a light. It's useful fiction, but fiction none the less. And yes, Einstein's theory is more useful fiction. Grammar is a model of language. It is not language.

I have no idea what you are saying: calling grammar a "fiction" was supposed to be a way to undermine it but now you are saying that it was some completely trivial statement that applies to the best science?