230015 Linguistic Perspectives on Large Language Models (S) (WiSe 2025/2026)

Large Language Models (LLMs) like GPT-3 or GPT-4 have greatly advanced the state-of-the-art in computational linguistics and AI in general. But since they seem to come so close to human language use, LLMs do also receive increasing attention in theoretical and experimental strands of linguistics: linguistic researchers are currently debating to what extent LLMs can be seen as a model of the human ability to process language and use it for communication. In this research-oriented seminar, we will first cover some computational basics of LLMs and then dive into this debate: what do LLMs know about human language and how can we test this? How can we use insights and experimental designs from linguistic research to study LLMs? And maybe: how can we use LLMs to learn something about human language?

Requirements for participation, required level

Some background knowlegde in one of the following areas would be great:

• linguistics (or sub-areas)

or

• machine learning, computational language modeling