<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;"><div style="font-size: 16px;"><p class="p1">Something unbelievable happened to me: I wanted to write a short note about the use of the term <i>token</i> in linguistics and computer science, and to post it here. But then it turned out that far more needed to be said—so here it is: the long version of my terminology wake-up call.</p><p class="p1"><br></p><p class="p3"><b>Modeling Language Without Language: A ChatGPT Lesson for Language Research</b><b></b></p><p class="p1"><i>(Proofread and edited using ChatGPT)</i><i></i></p><p class="p2"><br></p><p class="p1">ChatGPT enthusiastically proposed the following announcement:</p><p class="p2"><br></p><blockquote style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 15px; font-width: normal; font-size: 19px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-kerning: auto; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-feature-settings: normal; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-variation-settings: normal; color: rgb(14, 14, 14);">What does ChatGPT actually “see”? Not words. Not morphemes. Just tokens.</blockquote><blockquote style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 15px; font-width: normal; font-size: 19px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-kerning: auto; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-feature-settings: normal; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-variation-settings: normal; color: rgb(14, 14, 14); min-height: 23.4px;"><br></blockquote><blockquote style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 15px; font-width: normal; font-size: 19px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-kerning: auto; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-feature-settings: normal; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-variation-settings: normal; color: rgb(14, 14, 14);">This paper explores how linguistic misreadings of CS terms like <i>token</i> and <i>tree</i> have shaped (and distorted) research on LLMs—and why that matters for usage-based and generative linguistics alike.</blockquote><blockquote style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 15px; font-width: normal; font-size: 19px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-kerning: auto; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-feature-settings: normal; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-variation-settings: normal; color: rgb(14, 14, 14); min-height: 23.4px;"><br></blockquote><blockquote style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 15px; font-width: normal; font-size: 19px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-kerning: auto; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-feature-settings: normal; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-variation-settings: normal; color: rgb(14, 14, 14);">📌 Linguists, beware: a <i>token</i> is not a <i>word</i>.</blockquote><blockquote style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 15px; font-width: normal; font-size: 19px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-kerning: auto; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-feature-settings: normal; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-variation-settings: normal; color: rgb(14, 14, 14); min-height: 23.4px;"><br></blockquote><blockquote style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 15px; font-width: normal; font-size: 19px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-kerning: auto; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-feature-settings: normal; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-variation-settings: normal; color: rgb(14, 14, 14);">📎 PDF / preprint: https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/008998</blockquote><p class="p2"><br></p><p class="p1">#ChatGPT #LLMs #linguistics #computationalLinguistics #terminology #tokenization #generativeGrammar #usageBasedLinguistics</p><p class="p1">—</p><p class="p1">All the best, </p><p class="p1">Stela</p></div><div>
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