Large Language Models: What can they tell us about language structure and acquisition
1:00 – 6:00pm, Thursday November 6, 2026
George Sherman Union, Boston University

• Ethan Wilcox, Ph.D. (Georgetown University)
• Najoung Kim, Ph.D. (Boston University)
• Virginia Valian, Ph.D. (Hunter College and CUNY Graduate Center)

What are we learning from Large Language Models? This year’s SLD Symposium brings together leaders in LLM work on language learning with a distinguished language acquisition researcher to tell us about cutting edge work in generative AI and to consider what this work to date can and cannot tell us – and what it might tell us in the future – about human language learning and natural language structure.