At this semester’s first MCQLL meeting, Eva Portelance will be presenting The roles of neural networks in language acquisition.

When:
Tuesday, January 9, 15:00–16:00 (Montréal time, UTC-5)
Where:
MCQLL meetings this semester are in hybrid format. We will meet in-person in room 117 of the McGill Linguistics Department, 1085 Dr-Penfield. If you’d like to attend virtually, the Zoom link is here.

All are welcome to attend.

  • Speaker:
    Eva Portelance
    Title:
    The roles of neural networks in language acquisition
    Abstract:

    How can modern neural networks like large language models be useful to the field of language acquisition, and more broadly cognitive science, if they are not a priori designed to be cognitive models? As developments towards natural language understanding and generation have improved leaps and bounds, with models like GPT-4, the question of how they can inform our understanding of human language acquisition has re-emerged. As such, it is critical to examine how in practice linking hypotheses between models and human learners can be safely established. To address these questions, I present a model taxonomy, including four modeling approaches, each having differing goals, from exploratory hypothesis generation to hypothesis differentiation and testing. I ground each approach in the realist vs. instrumentalist debates in philosophy of science and present in practice examples of two of these approaches from my own work.