Language Varieties of Italy: Technology Challenges & Opportunities 
Posted inItalian NLP Research Technology

Language Varieties of Italy: Technology Challenges & Opportunities 

Researcher: Alan Ramponi | Italy is characterized by a one-of-a-kind linguistic diversity landscape in Europe, which implicitly encodes local knowledge, cultural traditions, artistic expressions, and history of its speakers. However, most local languages and dialects in Italy are at risk of disappearing within a few generations. The NLP community has recently begun to engage with endangered languages, including those of Italy.
How to do things with nonwords: pragmatics, biosemantics, and origins of language in animal communication
Posted inAnimals Pragmatics Research

How to do things with nonwords: pragmatics, biosemantics, and origins of language in animal communication

Recent discussions of animal communication and the evolution of language have advocated adopting a ‘pragmatics-first’ approach, according to which “a more productive framework” for primate communication research should be “pragmatics, the field of linguistics that examines the role of context in shaping the meaning of linguistic utterances” (Wheeler and Fischer, Evol Anthropol 21:195–205, 2012: 203). After distinguishing two different conceptions of pragmatics that advocates of the pragmatics-first approach have implicitly relied on (one Carnapian, the other Gricean), I argue that neither conception adequately serves the purposes of pragmatics-first approaches to the origins of human linguistic communication.
Dissociating language and thought in large language models
Posted inCognition Research Technology

Dissociating language and thought in large language models

Large language models (LLMs) have come closest among all models to date to mastering human language, yet opinions about their linguistic and cognitive capabilities remain split. Here, we evaluate LLMs using a distinction between formal linguistic competence (knowledge of linguistic rules and patterns) and functional linguistic competence (understanding and using language in the world).