Now this is interesting! I've always been very dubious about Chomsky's innateness theories; does #ChatGPT show anything interesting about whether particular innate structures are, or more likely are not, actually needed to learn human language?
Even if they aren't needed, there could still be a claim that humans do have them and it shows in the way we learn language, which one could argue is different than the way an LLM does; but this is still an interesting start.
@ceoln
Here’s a survey article on large language models and how they undermine Chomsky’s approach to language: https://lingbuzz.net/lingbuzz/007180
It’s a good survey article, but I read it with a grain of salt, and want to spend time with the bibliography.
Here’s another good survey article on the 60-year feud between generative linguistics and neural net based theories of how the mind works:
https://sites.socsci.uci.edu/~lpearl/colareadinggroup/readings/Pater2019_GenLingDeepLearning.pdf
