The Origins of Language: What Babies, Animals, and Machines Can Tell Us

Catalog description

What makes linguistic communication possible? Do other primates “talk”? How do we understand messages from THE CURRICULUM 138 one another despite uncertainty and noise? In this course, we will consider central questions about language: Are we the only ones who have it? When did we learn it? How does artificial intelligence mimic it? This course will start with an introduction to comparative research with other species (nonhuman primates, whales, and insects), allowing students to consider many possible forms of communication. Next, we will look at humans. What can studies with babies and children tell us about the nature of our communication system? Finally, we will explore how large language models, such as ChatGPT, produce text that might look and feel like human writing. What have these models learned, and how should we study them? Students should come prepared to engage with the topic of communication from multiple perspectives, including empirical/scientific and critical. Through weekly small- group conferences, students will develop projects that relate the course to their collective interests, such as learning and communicating in Toki Pona (a philosophical artistic-constructed language), researching the limits of artificial intelligence language models, observing and analyzing children’s communication, or designing a behavioral intervention study that implements and evaluates different communication practices. Brains, Bodies, and Buildings