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SUMMARY:The Cognitive Biology of Language - Professor Johan Bolhuis\, Utre
 cht University
DTSTART:20240517T153000Z
DTEND:20240517T170000Z
UID:TALK212302@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:John Mollon
DESCRIPTION:The cognitive revolution in the middle of the last century has
  transformed the ways in which we study the human mind. Curiously\, when i
 t comes to language there is a growing behaviourist trend\, where it is re
 garded as an acquired skill\, not unlike the way in which Large Language M
 odels (LLMs) work. In contrast\, linguists in the Generative Grammar tradi
 tion consider the faculty of language to be a computational system within 
 the mind\, part of the human biological endowment. This means that biologi
 cal aspects of language\, in particular evolution\, development\, and (neu
 ral) mechanisms\, are open to investigation. I will discuss recent work on
  ‘comparative linguistics’\, particularly the behavioural\, neural and
  cognitive parallels between human language and birdsong\, and what we can
  and cannot conclude from it. The current behaviourist view of language ha
 s led to the rapid rise of LLMs\, although these AI models are actually no
 t about language at all. Natural language appears to be unique to the huma
 n mind\, and has no parallels either in animal or artificial intelligence.
LOCATION:Ground Floor Lecture Theatre\, Department of  Psychology
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