On February 28, 2025, at the Embed-Days Colloquium: From Theory to Applications, held at École Normale Supérieure in Paris, ASTOUND’s research partner Thierry Poibeau delivered a compelling presentation titled “Do Large Language Models Have Any Relevance for Linguistic Theory?”

This talk tackled a central question in contemporary AI and linguistics: Can Large Language Models (LLMs), despite their impressive performance in natural language tasks, offer meaningful contributions to linguistic theory? Poibeau examined the intricate relationship between abstract, non-grounded representations in LLMs and traditional linguistic frameworks.

While LLMs often challenge the assumptions of classical linguistics, they also open new doors for empirical exploration, raising both opportunities and concerns for how we conceptualize language, meaning, and cognition. This ongoing dialogue between AI and linguistics is at the heart of the ASTOUND project’s interdisciplinary approach to advancing socially aware, cognitively inspired AI systems.

Learn more about the event here: https://embedded-days.bunka.ai/