Co-Linguistics: AI-augmented Theory Construction in Linguistics

תקציר מקורי באנגליתarXiv:2609.37635v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: LLMs have been studied in recent linguistics as potential models of humans' linguistic abilities. Here we discuss an entirely different use of AI, namely as a co-scientist, to help construct and assess linguistic theories (we refer to the result as "Co-Linguistics"). Since the 1960s, linguistics has developed theories that are in principle mathematically formalizable, often in the language of formal language theory or model theory. The AI revolution in mathematics will thus have consequences in linguistics-but with an essential twist: proving new theorems is rarely the linguist's goal. Rather, one seeks to find the best set of axioms to derive empirical statements. AI could accelerate research by making existing theories fully explicit, by co