Very few African American soldiers in the First World War ever saw combat or accrued the cultural status conferred by participation in combat, because they were placed primarily into labor units. Sexualized assessments of motivation susceptibility played a crucial, but heretofore unappreciated role, in this placement. As this article demonstrates, sexual racism was central to these assessments and to Black soldiers’ placement because motivation susceptibility was measured, by the War Department, in terms of so-called “morale,” which referred simultaneously to a soldier’s mood and willingness to fight. Military leaders believed that morale was improved or imperiled by a soldier’s sexual conduct. If a soldier was sexually restrained, he could be motivated to fight by chivalrously redirecting his sexual energy into battle. Conversely, if a soldier was sexually unrestrained, he could not be motivated through “parasexual” measures. Connecting the dots between the morale programs of the First World War and the racial exclusion of personnel placement, this article demonstrates that sexualized motivation is central to the story of race and racism in this pivotal conflict.

This essay considers sign-processes in their open-endedness. The concern is specifically the non-purposiveness of semiosis for what it might intimate about the provisional nature of forms and the possibility of a radical openness to self-transformation. Sikh philosophy (gurmat), semiotics, and deconstruction here offer a heterogeneous problem-space for considering the anteriority of non-purposiveness in cosmic play (līlā) and equipoise (sahaj). The study first finds a recurrent commitment to the non-purposiveness of play across diverse approaches in metaphysics, modern aesthetic theory, and the more recent so-called ludic turn, developing from this thread a constructive treatment of cosmic play consisting of latitude, excess, indeterminacy, generativity, and expenditure, or endless textural differentiation. This essay then elaborates an account of equipoise in practical involvement whose pursuit of action is alive to that which is imperceptible amidst this endless textural differentiation, developing an account of action that realizes its own ludic workings in a non-coercive creativity as intimated by Peircean considerations of musement and cosmic love. Findings offer the study of signs an orientation to the un-fore-seen (im-pro-visus) constitutive of semiosis, in doing so heightening for social semiotic analysis a sensitivity to the indexical excess that conditions the formation of any text. In each instance, Sikh philosophy is found to offer key sources for considering semiosis as open-ended, non-purposive, and ludic-equipoisal.

We argue that language models (LMs) have strong potential as investigative tools for probing the distinction between possible and impossible natural languages and thus uncovering the inductive biases that support human language learning. We outline a phased research program in which LM architectures are iteratively refined to better discriminate between possible and impossible languages, supporting linking hypotheses to human cognition.

According to F&M, both infants and language models (LMs) find attested languages easier to learn than “impossible languages” that have unnatural structures. We review the literature and show that LMs often learn attested and many impossible languages equally well. Difficult to learn impossible languages are simply more complex (or random). LMs are missing human inductive biases that support language acquisition.

Futrell and Mahowald frame the success of neural language models (LMs) as supporting gradient, usage-based linguistic theories. I argue that LMs can also instantiate theories based on formal structures – the types of theories seen in the generative tradition. This argument expands the space of theories that can be tested with LMs, potentially enabling reconciliations between usage-based and generative accounts.

Futrell and Mahowald argue that neural networks have learned non-trivial aspects of language. We argue that these systems have not in fact demonstrated “mastery” of syntax, marshalling recent evidence, and that they further obscure explanatory insights with respect to topics in the cognitive neuroscience of language.

Futrell and Mahowald present a useful framework bridging technology-oriented deep learning systems and explanation-oriented linguistic theories. Unfortunately, the target article’s focus on generative text-based Large Language Models (LLMs) fundamentally limits fruitful interactions with linguistics, as many interesting questions on human language fall outside what is captured by written text. We argue that audio-based deep learning models can and should play a crucial role.

In this commentary, we challenge the idea that Language Models (LMs) provide explanatorily adequate models of human language. Findings from language evolution show that both humans and LMs fail to produce human-like language via inductive biases alone; the communicative function of language is crucial. More generally, both experimental and computational work underscore the fact that language is more than just incremental prediction.

Futrell and Mahowald argue language model (LM) success suggests humans may learn language entirely through domain-general statistical mechanisms. However, children differ crucially from LMs in their ability to surpass their input, their language learning trajectory, and the presence of a critical period. Until LMs account for these phenomena, it remains possible that human language acquisition is supported by innate, language-specific learning mechanisms.