Copilots for Linguists
AI, Constructions, and Frames

AI copilots, especially Large Language Models, can help linguists do research. This Elementgives a detailed tutorial, with full examples.

Tiago Timponi Torrent (Author), Thomas Hoffmann (Author), Arthur Lorenzi Almeida (Author), Mark Turner (Author)

9781009475907, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 1 February 2024

122 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 0.8 cm, 0.318 kg

AI can assist the linguist in doing research on the structure of language. This Element illustrates this possibility by showing how a conversational AI based on a Large Language Model (AI LLM chatbot) can assist the Construction Grammarian, and especially the Frame Semanticist. An AI LLM chatbot is a text-generation system trained on vast amounts of text. To generate text, it must be able to find patterns in the data and mimic some linguistic capacity, at least in the eyes of a cooperative human user. The authors do not focus on whether AIs “understand” language. Rather, they investigate whether AI LLM chatbots are useful tools for linguists. They reframe the discussion from what AI LLM chatbots can do with language to what they can do for linguists. They find that a chatty LLM can labor usefully as an eliciting interlocutor, and present precise, scripted routines for prompting conversational LLMs.

Introduction
1. Safety Instructions: Risks and Limitations of LLMs and Generative AI
2. Constructions
3. Using an AI to Help Study Constructions
4. Limitations of LLMs for Constructional Analysis
5. Cognitive Frames and FrameNet
6. Prompt Engineering for Building FrameNet
7. Final safety instructions: Risks and limitations revisited
8. Imagining the Future of Copilots for Linguists.

Subject Areas: Grammar, syntax & morphology [CFK]