{"id":17962,"date":"2026-04-20T06:05:16","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T10:05:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/whamit.mit.edu\/?p=17962"},"modified":"2026-04-23T14:12:26","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T18:12:26","slug":"colloquium-paul-smolensky-microsoft-johns-hopkins-university","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/2026\/04\/20\/colloquium-paul-smolensky-microsoft-johns-hopkins-university\/","title":{"rendered":"Colloquium - Paul Smolensky (Microsoft\/Johns Hopkins University)"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><b data-olk-copy-source=\"MailCompose\">Speaker<\/b>: Paul Smolensky (<span data-olk-copy-source=\"MessageBody\">Microsoft\/Johns Hopkins University<\/span>)<\/div>\n<div>\n<div><b>Title<\/b>: Do the syntactic abilities of generative AI systems falsify fundamental principles of generative linguistics<\/div>\n<div><b>When<\/b>: Friday, April 24th, 3:30-5pm\u00a0<\/div>\n<div><b>Where<\/b>: 32-141\u00a0<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Do the impressive abilities of neural-network Large Language Models in generating rich, well-formed syntax falsify fundamental principles of generative linguistic theory? The answer I will argue for is: no. But it will be a rather nuanced \u0093no\u0094, trying to identify the proper treatment of generative AI for generative linguistics. Specifically, I will consider these principles:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Computability: Generating natural language with rich, human-level syntax requires use of symbolic grammatical rule systems.<\/li>\n<li>Explanation: Theoretical explanation in generative linguistics requires built-in discrete symbolic structure.<\/li>\n<li>Acquisition: Children\u0092s ability to acquire language requires innate knowledge of grammatical rule systems.<\/li>\n<li>Universals: Linguistic universals can only be explained from innate limitations on what languages are learnable.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>The quantity of discussion of these questions will decrease sharply from 1\u00964, the bulk of the presentation focused on 1. The discussion of 1 takes off from Smolensky, Fernandez, Zhou, Opper, Davies &amp; Gao (JAIR 2025; arXiv:2410.17498).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Speaker: Paul Smolensky (Microsoft\/Johns Hopkins University) Title: Do the syntactic abilities of generative AI systems falsify fundamental principles of generative linguistics When: Friday, April 24th, 3:30-5pm\u00a0 Where: 32-141\u00a0 Do the impressive abilities of neural-network Large Language Models in generating rich, well-formed syntax falsify fundamental principles of generative linguistic theory? The answer I will argue for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-announcements"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17962"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17962\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17975,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17962\/revisions\/17975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}