#426 – Edward Gibson: Human Language, Psycholinguistics, Syntax, Grammar & LLMs

Edward Gibson is a psycholinguistics professor at MIT and heads the MIT Language Lab. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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Transcript: https://lexfridman.com/edward-gibson-transcript

EPISODE LINKS:
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Edward’s Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=4FsWE64AAAAJ
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OUTLINE:
Here’s the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.
(00:00)– Introduction
(10:53)– Human language
(14:59)– Generalizations in language
(20:46)– Dependency grammar
(30:45)– Morphology
(39:20)– Evolution of languages
(42:40)– Noam Chomsky
(1:26:46)– Thinking and language
(1:40:16)– LLMs
(1:53:14)– Center embedding
(2:19:42)– Learning a new language
(2:23:34)– Nature vs nurture
(2:30:10)– Culture and language
(2:44:38)– Universal language
(2:49:01)– Language translation
(2:52:16)– Animal communication