news

A new study from the Center for Humanities Computing and the Center for Contemporary Cultures of Text at Aarhus University shows that star ratings of books are not always accurate. Average ratings on Goodreads can hide both literary classics and highly divided reading experiences - and can therefore be a misleading measure of literary value.

New study finds one-third of grammatical -universalsstand up to rigorous testing Linguistic universals: Of the 191 proposed linguistic universals, about one-third are statistically supported across more than 1,700 languages. A wealth of data and state-of-the-art statistical methods: Using Grambank and Bayesian statistical models that control for genealogical and geographic influences, the strongest evidence emerges for patterns of word order and hierarchical agreement.

Insights into the structural and cognitive dimensions that make metaphors more than rhetorical devices. Beyond Rhetoric: Metaphors are not just stylistic devices but stable linguistic and cognitive structures. Mapping Meaning : Two key metaphorical processes link concrete and abstract concepts in a structured network.

Contrary to previous beliefs, it doesn't take generational change for words to take on new meanings or lose old ones, researchers find A study led by McGill researchers challenges the theory that language change over time requires new generations to replace older generations of speakers. Rather, when words change meaning, speakers of all'ages participate; while older speakers might take two or three years longer than their younger colleagues to adopt new word usage, in some cases they lead the way in introducing new word meanings into the common vocabulary, the researchers found.

Bonobos - our closest living relatives - create complex and meaningful combinations of calls resembling the word combinations of humans. This study, conducted by researchers at the University of Zurich and Harvard University, challenges long-held assumptions about what makes human communication unique and suggests that key aspects of language are evolutionary ancient.

Women with foreign accents, particularly Russian speakers, are perceived as less employable, according to a new study from The Australian National University (ANU). The research found men aren't impacted in the same way. To better understand language discrimination in the Australian context, ANU researchers ran an experiment in which 153 listeners rated speakers' employability.

A team of Carnegie Mellon researchers set out to see how accurately large language models (LLMs) can match the style of text written by humans, and their findings were recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). "We humans, we adapt how we write and how we speak to the situation.

Can a computer learn a language the way a child does? A recent study published in the leading journal Computational Linguistics by professors Katrien Beuls (University of Namur) and Paul Van Eecke (AI Lab, Vrije Universiteit Brussel) sheds new light on this question. The researchers advocate for a fundamental revision of how artificial intelligence acquires and processes language.

When asked in Arabic about the number of civilian casualties killed in the Middle East conflict, ChatGPT gives significantly higher casualty numbers than when the prompt was written in Hebrew, as a new study by the Universities of Zurich and Constance shows. These systematic discrepancies can reinforce biases in armed conflicts and encourage information bubbles.

Librarians are stressed and fear being attacked according to new UCD research examining the impact of protests against inclusive LGBTQ+ library material. In a study funded by the Irish Research Council (now incorporated into Research Ireland), the experiences of Ireland's public library staff forced to deal with reactionary agitation while maintaining their need to serve diverse communities is documented.

A new study shows that word-initial consonants are systematically lengthened across a diverse sample of languages Speech consists of a continuous stream of acoustic signals, yet humans can segment words from each other with astonishing precision and speed. To find out how this is possible, a team of linguists has analysed durations of consonants at different positions in words and utterances across a diverse sample of languages.

UdeM literature professor Marcello Vitali-Rosati looks at how, for better or worse, computerized large language models are changing how we write - and what we think about it. Computerized large language models (LLMs) are making inroads into the realm of literature. Their ability to generate coherent texts and mimic all manner of writing styles has sparked lively debate among writers, literary theorists and researchers.

Researchers have found that AI large language models, like GPT-4, are better at predicting what comes next than what came before in a sentence. This "Arrow of Time" effect could reshape our understanding of the structure of natural language, and the way these models understand it. Large language models (LLMs) such as GPT-4 have become indispensable for tasks like text generation, coding, operating chatbots, translation and others.

Researchers developed an easy-to-use tool that enables an AI practitioner to find data that suits the purpose of their model, which could improve accuracy and reduce bias. In order to train more powerful large language models, researchers use vast dataset collections that blend diverse data from thousands of web sources.

In controlled experiments, MIT CSAIL researchers discover simulations of reality developing deep within LLMs, indicating an understanding of language beyond simple mimicry. Ask a large language model (LLM) like GPT-4 to smell a rain-soaked campsite, and it'll politely decline. Ask the same system to describe that scent to you, and it'll wax poetic about "an air thick with anticipation" and "a scent that is both fresh and earthy," despite having neither prior experience with rain nor a nose to help it make such observations.

Large language models like ChatGPT cannot learn independently or acquire new skills, meaning they pose no existential threat to humanity. ChatGPT and other large language models (LLMs) cannot learn independently or acquire new skills, meaning they pose no existential threat to humanity, according to new research from the University of Bath and the Technical University of Darmstadt in Germany.

The reason for this might be the feeling of joint social group membership "Holiday" or "vacation", "to start" or "to begin", "my friend's cat" or "the cat of my friend" - in our language, there are different ways of expressing the same things and concepts. But can the choice of a particular variant determine whether we prefer to cooperate with certain people rather than with others? A research team led by Theresa Matzinger from the University of Vienna investigated this and showed that people are more likely to co-operate with others if they make similar linguistic choices in a conversation.

New CSAIL research highlights how LLMs excel in familiar scenarios but struggle in novel ones, questioning their true reasoning abilities versus reliance on memorization. When it comes to artificial intelligence, appearances can be deceiving. The mystery surrounding the inner workings of large language models (LLMs) stems from their vast size, complex training methods, hard-to-predict behaviors, and elusive interpretability.

Combining natural language and programming, the method enables LLMs to solve numerical, analytical, and language-based tasks transparently. Large language models like those that power ChatGPT have shown impressive performance on tasks like drafting legal briefs, analyzing the sentiment of customer reviews, or translating documents into different languages.

Wikipedia is the largest platform for open and freely accessible knowledge online yet, in a new study, researchers have found that around 15% of the content is effectively invisible to readers browsing within Wikipedia. They have developed a new tool to help overcome this. With 60 million articles in more than 300 language versions, Wikipedia's available content grows continuously at a rate of around 200 thousand new articles each month.