”. . . the fact, as suggested by these findings, that semantic properties can be extracted from the formal manipulation of pure syntactic properties – that meaning can emerge from pure form – is undoubtedly one of the most stimulating ideas of our time.”

—The Structure of Meaning in Language: Parallel Narratives in Linear Algebra and Category Theory

In our last post, we began exploring what Large Language Models (LLMs) and their uncanny abilities might tell us about language itself. I posited that the power of LLMs stems from the statistical nature of language.

But what is that statistical nature of language?