Hostname: page-component-76d6cb85b7-lcgwf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-07-17T21:57:29.075Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

LLMs are not children: They have to earn our love

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2026

Jeffrey Lidz Open the ORCID record for Jeffrey Lidz [Opens in a new window]  and
Katherine Howitt Open the ORCID record for Katherine Howitt [Opens in a new window]
Jeffrey Lidz*
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, University of Maryland at College Park, College Park, MD, USA jlidz@umd.edu kghowitt@umd.edu
Katherine Howitt
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, University of Maryland at College Park, College Park, MD, USA jlidz@umd.edu kghowitt@umd.edu
*
*Corresponding author.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Futrell and Mahowald argue that the success of large language models should move the field away from the formal structures of generative linguistic theory. The limited success of these models falls short of formal linguistic theory in explaining both the character of human languages and understanding the trajectory of child language acquisition.

Information

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 49 , 2026 , e210
Check for updates
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2026. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Abeillé, A., Hemforth, B., Winckel, E., & Gibson, E. (2020). Extraction from subjects: Differences in acceptability depend on the discourse function of the construction. Cognition, 204, 104293. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104293 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Boeckx, C. (2008). Islands. Language and Linguistics Compass, 2(1), 151–167. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-818X.2007.00043.x CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boguraev, S., Potts, C., & Mahowald, K. (2025). Causal interventions reveal shared structure across English filler–gap constructions. In Christodoulopoulos, C., Chakraborty, T., Rose, C., & Peng, V. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 2025 conference on empirical methods in natural language processing (pp. 25032–25053). Association for Computational Linguistics. https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2025.emnlp-main.1271 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cartner, M., Kogan, M., Webster, N., Wagers, M. & Sichel, I. (2025). Subject islands do not reduce to construction-specific discourse function. Cognition. Article in press.Google Scholar
Chung, S. (2009). Six arguments for wh-movement in Chamorro. In Gerdts, D. B., Moore, J. C., & Polinsky, M. (Eds.), Hypothesis A/Hypothesis B: Linguistic explorations in honor of David M. Perlmutter (pp. 91–110). The MIT Press.10.7551/mitpress/7670.003.0008CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chomsky, N. (1975). Reflections on language. Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
Chomsky, N. (1977). On wh-movement. In Culicover, P., Akmajian, A., & Wasow, T. (Eds.), Formal syntax. (pp. 71–133). Academic Press.Google Scholar
Cuneo, N., & Goldberg, A. E. (2023). The discourse functions of grammatical constructions explain an enduring syntactic puzzle. Cognition, 240, 105563. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105563 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Erteschik-Shir, N. (1973). On the nature of island constraints (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). MIT.Google Scholar
Fisher, C., Jin, K., & Scott, R. (2020) The developmental origins of syntactic bootstrapping. Topics in Cognitive Science, 12(1), 48–77.10.1111/tops.12447CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fox, D. (1999). Reconstruction, binding theory, and the interpretation of chains. Linguistic Inquiry, 30(2), 157–196.10.1162/002438999554020CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gold, E. M. (1967). Language identification in the limit. Information and Control, 10(5), 447–474. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0019-9958(67)91165-5 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldberg, A. (2006). Constructions at work: The nature of generalization in language. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Grolla, E. (2022). Syntactic constraints and medial wh-questions in child Brazilian Portuguese. In Gong, Y., & Kpogo, F. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 46th Annual Boston University conference on language development (pp. 256–269). Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Howitt, K., Nair, S., Dods, A., & Hopkins, R. M. (2024). Generalizations across filler-gap dependencies in neural language models. In Barak, L., & Alikhani, M. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 28th conference on computational natural language learning (pp. 269–279). Association for Computational Linguistics. https://aclanthology.org/2024.conll-1.21 10.18653/v1/2024.conll-1.21CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huang, C. T. J. (1982). Logical relations in Chinese and the theory of grammar (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). MIT.Google Scholar
Lidz, J., White, A. S., & Baier, R. (2017). The role of incremental parsing in syntactically conditioned word learning. Cognitive Psychology, 97, 62–78. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogpsych.2017.06.002 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lidz, J. & Williams, A. (2009). Constructions on holiday. Cognitive Linguistics, 20(1), 177–189. https://doi.org/10.1515/COGL.2009.011 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liter, A., Grolla, E., & Lidz, J. (2022). Cognitive inhibition explains children’s production of medial wh-phrases. Language Acquisition, 29(3), 327–359. https://doi.org/10.1080/10489223.2021.2023813 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lutken, C. J., Legendre, G., & Omaki, A. (2020). Syntactic creativity errors in children’s wh-questions. Cognitive Science, 44(7), e12849. https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12849 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McCloskey, J. (2000). Quantifier float and wh-movement in Irish English. Linguistic Inquiry, 31(1), 57–84. https://doi.org/10.1162/002438900554299 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCloskey, J. (2001). The morphosyntax of wh-extraction in Irish. Journal of Linguistics, 37(1), 67–100. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4176643 10.1017/S0022226701008775CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Merchant, J. (2009). Phrasal and clausal comparatives in Greek and the abstractness of syntax. Journal of Greek Linguistics, 9(1), 134–164. https://doi.org/10.1163/156658409X12500896406005 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oiry, M., & Demirdache, H. (2006). Evidence from L1 acquisition for the syntax of wh-scope marking in French. In Torrens, V., & Escobar, L. (Eds.), The acquisition of syntax in romance languages (pp. 289–315). John Benjamins.10.1075/lald.41.14oirCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ozaki, S., Yurovsky, D., & Levin, L. (2022). How well do LSTM language models learn filler-gap dependencies? In Ettinger, A., Hunter, T., & Prickett, B. (Eds.), Proceedings of the society for computation in linguistics (pp. 76–88). online: Association for Computational Linguistics. https://aclanthology.org/2022.scil-1.6/ Google Scholar
Perkins, L., Feldman, N., & Lidz, J. (2022). The power of ignoring: Filtering input for argument-structure acquisition. Cognitive Science, 46(1), e13080. https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.13080.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Perkins, L., Feldman, N., & Lidz, J. (2025). Mind the Gap: Learning the surface forms of movement dependencies. Language. Article in press.Google Scholar
Perkins, L. & Lidz, J. (2019). Filler-gap dependency comprehension at 15-months: The role of vocabulary. Language Acquisition, 27(1), 98–115.10.1080/10489223.2019.1659274CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perkins, L. & Lidz, J. (2021). Eighteen-month-old infants represent nonlocal syntactic dependencies. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(41), e2026469118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2026469118.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ross, J. R. (1967). Constraints on variables in syntax. (Doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology).Google Scholar
Sprouse, J. (2007). A program for experimental syntax. University of Maryland dissertation.Google Scholar
Sprouse, J., Caponigro, I., Greco, C., & Cecchetto, C. (2016). Experimental syntax and the variation of island effects in English and Italian. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, 34(1), 307–344.10.1007/s11049-015-9286-8CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thornton, R. (1990). Adventures in long-distance moving: The acquisition of complex wh-questions (Doctoral dissertation). University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT.Google Scholar
Wexler, K. & Culicover, P. (1980). Formal principles of language acquisition. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Wilcox, E., Futrell, R., & Levy, R. (2024). Using computational models to test syntactic learnability. Linguistic Inquiry, 55, 1–44. https://doi.org/10.1162/ling_a_00491 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilcox, E., Levy, R., Morita, T., & Futrell, R. (2018). What do RNN language models learn about filler–gap dependencies? In Linzen, T., Chrupała, G., & Alishahi, A. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 2018 EMNLP workshop blackboxNLP: Analyzing and interpreting neural networks for NLP (pp. 211–221). Association for Computational Linguistics. https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/W18-5423 CrossRefGoogle Scholar