Edward Gibson: Human Language, Psycholinguistics, Syntax, Grammar & LLMs | Lex Fridman Podcast #426

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Transcript: https://lexfridman.com/edward-gibson-transcript

0:00 – Introduction & sponsor mentions:

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1:13 – Human language

5:19 – Generalizations in language

11:06 – Dependency grammar

21:05 – Morphology

29:40 – Evolution of languages

33:00 – Noam Chomsky

1:17:06 – Thinking and language

1:30:36 – LLMs

1:43:35 – Center embedding

2:10:02 – Learning a new language

2:13:54 – Nature vs nurture

2:20:30 – Culture and language

2:34:58 – Universal language

2:39:21 – Language translation

2:42:36 – Animal communication

how do we keep track of what the person we are speaking knows based on what I said before during the conversation? like if I mention someone, then after awhile, i can say "she" with no additional details, because I am keeping track of the other person knows who I am talking about. but that seems very difficult.

talk to douglas hofstadter while you can

Very informative if you have a genuine interest in linguistics.

insightful!

Hello professor! I had hundreds and hundreds of exercises concerning tree diagram of sentences but one time when I was drawing a tree, I thought if I could draw a tree diagram of a sentence yet I'm going to do it in terms of function of words instead of displaying their nature so instead of writing "the boy" as noun phrase and the break it down into determiner and a noun, I am going to put subject for the whole combination and then moving to the next combination or phrase and so on … what you think about this ?

1:06:31 In the texts written by classical latin writers, like Cicero, the words don't have short dependencies. Cicero's entire text in each book is like a puzzle of words — once you see the connections between each word the text becames clear.

Listening to this with my 13 year old son, I had to pause the video to have a conversation volley playing with increasing distance between dependent words. It was hilarious and fun for both of us:) Grateful for these moments together with laughter and learning. Thanks for sharing your work with us! Also loved the animal communication section. I’m learning Chicken currently and can say a few things to them (for example: “predator in the sky!” and “come here, I found something interesting for you.”)

Is there a relationship between being good at programming and learning general linguistics?

My theory for legalese central-embedding: warding off adversarial misquotation. If we include a reference to the def in a parenthetical clause, it reduces the chance an adversary can argue that the contract meant something else than it did in a given section.

I feel relieved that I'm not the only one that doesn't have an inner voice (that I'm aware of). People have asked me if I dream in French or English, but I don't remember language having been involved in my dreams.

i need another Joscha Bach pod