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adamddev1 4 hours ago

> Chomsky has focused on the generative side of language

The answers to "why" that Chomsky pushes so hard for are very valuable to adult language learners. There are basic syntactic rules to generating broadly correct language. Having these rules discovered and explained in the simplest possible form is irreplaceable by statistical models. Neural networks, much like native speakers can say "well this just sounds right," but adult learners need a mathematical theory of how and why they can generate sentences. Yes, this changes with time and circumstances, but the simple rules and theories are there if we put the effort in to look for them.

There are many languages with a very small corpus of training data. The LLMs fail miserably at communicating with them or explaining things about their grammar, but if we look hard for the underlying theories Chomsky was looking for, we can make huge leaps and bounds in understanding how to use them.