Thank you for the Leiden references. I hadn't encountered this framework before. The "language symbiont" framing resonates with what I've been circling around: a system that operates with its own logic, sometimes orthogonal to conscious intention.

The mule analogy is going to stick with me. LLMs have inherited the statistical structure of the symbiont without the host: pattern without grounding. Whether that makes them useful instruments for studying the symbiont itself, or just misleading simulacra, is exactly what I'm trying to work out.

Going to dig into Kortlandt tonight.

Glad I shared if it serves you!

> LLMs have inherited the statistical structure of the symbiont without the host: pattern without grounding.

I like this. I think it's not too far a leap to suggest something like "soul" without "body" -- a spirit in the truest sense. I think there's real value in the things we've believed ourselves to be made of though deep time, though without evidence or proper provenance. I suspect we've always been grappling to find language for the unnameable things.

Some of my own [somewhat outdated] reflections on language from the time I came across it, in case you're interested :) https://nodescription.net/notes/#2019-07-13