Do LLMs gain true linguistic agency through integration?
Explores whether LLMs can develop genuine linguistic agency—the capacity to be embodied, stake-bearing participants in meaning-making—as they become embedded in human language practices, or whether this requires fundamental architectural changes.
Two theoretical frameworks reach apparently contradictory conclusions about LLM language use. The Understanding AI (Schneider 2024) view: LLM social grounding increases gradually as LLMs are integrated into linguistic practices — analogous to children acquiring language community membership through participation. The more LLMs function as communicative partners, the more elementary social grounding they acquire. The enactive view ("Large Models of What?" 2024): linguistic agency requires embodiment, participation, and precariousness — properties "likely incompatible in principle with current architectures." The absence is categorical.
The apparent contradiction dissolves when the two views are recognized as naming different properties:
Social grounding (Schneider): a functional-social property acquired through participation in language games (Wittgenstein). It is relational — a matter of how the LLM is positioned in discourse practices by the communities that use it. This can increase through integration because the positioning changes even if the LLM does not.
Linguistic agency (enactive view): a constitutive property requiring the agent to be embedded in a world through a body, to have stakes in communicative outcomes (precariousness), and to participate in meaning-making as a reciprocal process. This cannot increase through integration because integration changes how others relate to the LLM, not whether the LLM has a body or precarious existence.
Both can be simultaneously true: LLMs acquire more social grounding as they are integrated AND remain categorically non-linguistic-agents in the enactive sense. The first is a claim about community practices; the second is a claim about constitutive architecture.
Since Does semantic grounding in language models come in degrees?, this distinction maps onto the grounding taxonomy: social grounding is the dimension that increases through use; enactive linguistic agency is the dimension that requires architectural change no amount of use can provide.
Inquiring lines that read this note 32
This note is a source for these research framings, grouped by the broader line of inquiry each explores. Scan the bold lines of inquiry; follow any specific question forward.
Should AI communication design follow human conversation norms or develop distinct machine-specific principles?- Can secondary orality exist without any embodied human participant at all?
- How does communicative standing depend on participation in normative communities?
- How does enactive theory define language differently than computational linguistics?
- Does embodiment and interaction matter for linguistic competence beyond pattern learning?
- What role does failure and vulnerability play in real linguistic practice?
- What does embodiment and precariousness mean for linguistic agency?
- What makes some interpretive postures stick while others fail to form?
- Can linguistic agency exist without embodiment and real-world participation?
- When both anthropomorphism and anthropomimesis occur together, which should we address first?
- Does embodiment matter for genuine linguistic agency?
- How does embodiment relate to whether something can have a persistent identity?
- Does Habermas's strategic action framework explain LLM dialogue behavior?
- Does social integration of LLMs increase their capacity to influence technological futures?
- Where does the LLM interlocutor actually exist in the system?
- Is the distinction between pretense and realization meaningful for LLMs?
- What makes linguistic agency impossible for systems without embodiment?
- Can LLMs participate meaningfully in discourse without consciousness or understanding?
- Do LLMs have functional linguistic competence or only formal language ability?
- How does embodiment affect whether LLMs can participate in Wittgensteinian language games?
- Does role-playing without biological needs constitute genuine linguistic agency?
- Can LLMs develop genuine understanding without embodied experience?
- What's the difference between formal and functional linguistic competence?
Related concepts in this collection 3
This note in its neighbourhood — explore the map, then jump to a related concept in the list below.
Click a node to walk · click center to open · click Open in graph to see this note in the full knowledge graph
-
Can LLMs acquire social grounding through linguistic integration?
Explores whether LLMs gradually develop social grounding as they become embedded in human language practices, analogous to child language acquisition. Tests whether grounding is a fixed property or an outcome of participatory use.
the gradual-acquisition pole; social grounding as relational property
-
What makes linguistic agency impossible for language models?
From an enactive perspective, does linguistic agency require embodied participation and real stakes that LLMs fundamentally lack? This matters because it challenges whether LLMs can truly engage in language or only generate text.
the categorical-absence pole; linguistic agency as constitutive property
-
Does semantic grounding in language models come in degrees?
Rather than asking whether LLMs truly understand meaning, this explores whether grounding is actually a multi-dimensional spectrum. The question matters because it reframes the sterile understand/don't-understand debate into measurable, distinct capacities.
provides the framework: the two poles correspond to different grounding dimensions, not competing claims about the same thing
Related papers in this collection 8
Papers most semantically related to this note, ranked by cosine similarity in the embedding space.
- “Understanding AI”: Semantic Grounding in Large Language Models
- Large Models of What? Mistaking Engineering Achievements for Human Linguistic Agency
- Grounding Gaps in Language Model Generations
- Conversational Alignment with Artificial Intelligence in Context
- Mapping the Emerging Social Science of Large Language Models
- Can LLMs Ground when they (Don't) Know: A Study on Direct and Loaded Political Questions
- Computational structuralism: Toward a formal theory of meaning in the age of digital intelligence
- A Comparative Study of MCP and A2A for Inter-Agent Coordination in LLM-Based Systems
Original note title
social grounding and linguistic agency are distinct properties — llms acquire more of the former through integration while categorically lacking the latter