Natural Language Processing RELIES on Linguistics
This is an incremental perspective paper for NLP researchers and linguists, emphasizing the continued relevance of linguistics in the field.
The paper argues that NLP still relies on linguistics in six key areas (Resources, Evaluation, Low-resource settings, Interpretability, Explanation, and Study of language), highlighting the enduring importance of linguistic expertise despite advances in LLMs.
Large Language Models (LLMs) have become capable of generating highly fluent text in certain languages, without modules specially designed to capture grammar or semantic coherence. What does this mean for the future of linguistic expertise in NLP? We highlight several aspects in which NLP (still) relies on linguistics, or where linguistic thinking can illuminate new directions. We argue our case around the acronym RELIES that encapsulates six major facets where linguistics contributes to NLP: Resources, Evaluation, Low-resource settings, Interpretability, Explanation, and the Study of language. This list is not exhaustive, nor is linguistics the main point of reference for every effort under these themes; but at a macro level, these facets highlight the enduring importance of studying machine systems vis-à-vis systems of human language.