Comment by suddenlybananas

14 days ago

That's not the goal of generative linguistics though; it's not an engineering project.

The problem encompasses not just biology and information technology, but also linguistics. Even if LLMs say nothing about biology, they do tell us something about the nature of language itself.

Again, that LLMs can learn to compose sophisticated texts from training alone does not close the case on Chomsky's position.

However, it is a piece of evidence against it. It does suggest, by Occam's razor, that a hardwired universal grammar is the lesser theory.