Emergence of a phonological bias in ChatGPT
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Abstract (arXiv)
Current large language models, such as OpenAI's ChatGPT, have captured the public's attention because how remarkable they are in the use of language. Here, I demonstrate that ChatGPT displays phonological biases that are a hallmark of human language processing. More concretely, just like humans, ChatGPT has a consonant bias. That is, the chatbot has a tendency to use consonants over vowels to identify words. This is observed across languages that differ in their relative distribution of consonants and vowels such as English and Spanish. Despite the differences in how current artificial intelligence language models are trained to process linguistic stimuli and how human infants acquire language, such training seems to be enough for the emergence of a phonological bias in ChatGPT
Key facts. Cited by 8 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 1 of its 14 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 25 May 2023.
Builds on
1 of 14 references.
References · 1
- 2020Language Models are Few-Shot Learnerscited by 32,419
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Citing papers per year: 2023: 3; 2024: 3; 2025: 2.
8 papers.
- 2024Beware of Words: Evaluating the Lexical Diversity of Conversational LLMs using ChatGPT as Case Studycited by 10
- 2023Playing with words: Comparing the vocabulary and lexical diversity of ChatGPT and humanscited by 8
- 2023How many words does ChatGPT know? The answer is ChatWordscited by 6
- 2024Foundation Models for Autonomous Robots in Unstructured Environmentscited by 3
- 2025Community size rather than grammatical complexity better predicts Large Language Model accuracy in a novel Wug Testcited by 2
- 2023Establishing Vocabulary Tests as a Benchmark for Evaluating Large Language Modelscited by 1
- 2024Open Conversational LLMs do not know most Spanish wordscited by 1
- 2025Understanding the Impact of Artificial Intelligence in Academic Writing: Metadata to the Rescuecited by 1
- 2025Community size rather than grammatical complexity better predicts Large Language Model accuracy in a novel Wug Test14 Oct 2025
- 2025Understanding the Impact of Artificial Intelligence in Academic Writing: Metadata to the Rescue23 Feb 2025
- 2024Foundation Models for Autonomous Robots in Unstructured Environments19 Jul 2024
- 2024Open Conversational LLMs do not know most Spanish words21 Mar 2024
- 2024Beware of Words: Evaluating the Lexical Diversity of Conversational LLMs using ChatGPT as Case Study11 Feb 2024
- 2023Establishing Vocabulary Tests as a Benchmark for Evaluating Large Language Models23 Oct 2023
- 2023How many words does ChatGPT know? The answer is ChatWords28 Sep 2023
- 2023Playing with words: Comparing the vocabulary and lexical diversity of ChatGPT and humans14 Aug 2023