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How the Brain Parses Language

https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-polyglot-neuroscientist-resolving-how-the-brain-parses-language-20251205/
26•mylifeandtimes•2d ago

Comments

moralIsYouLie•2d ago
reads like a collection of HN comments by commenters who like to build "chapter 1" textbook agents using instant-noodle "training tools". "and what would be the time complexity?"

I can't do this anymore.

Al-Khwarizmi•2h ago
Ev Fedorenko is a highly recognized cognitive scientist that has been studying how humans parse language for years.

Of course this doesn't mean one shouldn't question what she says (that would be an obvious authority fallacy), but I do think it's fair to say that if you want to question it, the argument should be more elaborate that "this sounds like she has no idea of the topic".

dr_dshiv•2h ago
> It almost sounds like you’re saying there’s essentially an LLM inside everyone’s brain. Is that what you’re saying?

>Pretty much. I think the language network is very similar in many ways to early LLMs, which learn the regularities of language and how words relate to each other. It’s not so hard to imagine, right?

Yet, completely glosses over the role of rhythm in parsing language. LLMs aren’t rhythmic at all, are they? Maybe each token production is a cycle, though… hmm…

GolDDranks•1h ago
I think it's obvious that she means that it's something _like_ LLMs in some aspects. You are correct in that rhythm and intonation are very important in parsing language. (And also an important cue when learning how to parse language!) It's clear that the human language network is not like LLM in that sense. However, it _is_ a bit like an _early_ LLM (remember GPT2?) in the sense that it can produce and parse language, not that it makes much deeper sense in it.
tcsenpai•1h ago
> But what if our neurobiological reality includes a system that behaves something like an LLM?

It almost seems like we got inspiration from our brain to build neural networks!

alfanick•51m ago
Anecdotal data, based on a sample of 1 (aka me). I'm originally Polish, but I would say my mother tongue is English. I also learned Latin as a kid/teen. Then learning any other languages is much easier, I also learned German and some Swiss German dialects. I can also do Spanish, Italian, French, Dutch, Czech, some Serbo-Croation. I think being Polish makes learning languages easy - as we have a lot of creations in Polish that do not translate easily to other languages. I think in my case it's the same part of brain that processes both human language and computer language. My brain can do another fun party trick: I never learned cyrillic, but I can read it just fine, my brain does like pattern matching and statistical analysis when reading cyrillic.

I also learned to think in hmm "concepts", and then apply a language of my choice to express them. It's a fun skill to have :) Obviously works of Chomsky are great, especially exploring if language evolves mind or is the other way around, does mind evolve language? [let's skip his rather controversial political views lately].

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How the Brain Parses Language

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