Recent Posts
The structure of sentences: an interview with Dr. Fan BaiBy Christina PapoutsiFor this interview we spoke to Dr. Fan Bai who was a PhD student at the MPI. We talked about his research, interesting findings and what he wants to do next. Read more |
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ChatGPT, do you get what I’m saying? The building blocks of meaningBy Sophie Slaats“Yes, I understand what you are saying,” responds the neural network ChatGPT. “I am a language model designed to understand human language and respond to natural language input. So I’m here to help if you have questions or need anything. What can I do for you?” Read more |
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Electrical Signals of ConversationBy Cecilia HustáWhen you think of language or conversation, what comes to your mind is probably chatting with a friend. What makes this conversation possible, though, is actually electrical signals in the brain. So what do electrical signals have to do with conversation? Read more |
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What’s On Your Mind: an interview with Dr. Marloes MakBy Caitlin DecuyperFor this interview we spoke to Dr. Marloes Mak who was a PhD student at the Radboud University. She talked about her research, interesting findings and what she is doing now. Read more |
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By
Natalia Levshina
Human languages are full of puzzles. For example, why do languages that have different forms for singular and plural nouns usually have shorter singular forms and longer plural forms for most nouns, like flower – flowers in English? Why are you more likely to say, give me my money than give my money to me? Why do languages like Latin or Czech, which have flexible word order, also tend to have case marking? For example, the Latin word liber “book” will have different forms depending on whether you say “The book is interesting” (liber), “I read a book” (librum) or “I found it in a book” (libro). Read more |