# Emergence of a phonological bias in ChatGPT

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.15929 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.15929/

## 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 (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [Beware of Words: Evaluating the Lexical Diversity of Conversational LLMs using ChatGPT as Case Study](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.15518/) (2024)
- [Playing with words: Comparing the vocabulary and lexical diversity of ChatGPT and humans](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.07462/) (2023)
- [How many words does ChatGPT know? The answer is ChatWords](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.16777/) (2023)
- [Foundation Models for Autonomous Robots in Unstructured Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.14296/) (2024)
- [Community size rather than grammatical complexity better predicts Large Language Model accuracy in a novel Wug Test](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.12463/) (2025)
- [Establishing Vocabulary Tests as a Benchmark for Evaluating Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.14703/) (2023)
- [Open Conversational LLMs do not know most Spanish words](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.15491/) (2024)
- [Understanding the Impact of Artificial Intelligence in Academic Writing: Metadata to the Rescue](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.16713/) (2025)

## 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