Work

Speaking of Language: Reflections on Metalanguage Research in NLP

Year: 2026

Type: conference-paper

Abstract: This work aims to shine a spotlight on the topic of metalanguage.We first define metalanguage, link it to NLP and LLMs, and then discuss our two labs' metalanguage-centered efforts.Finally, we discuss four dimensions of metalanguage and metalinguistic tasks, offering a list of understudied future research directions.

DOI: 10.18653/v1/2026.bigpicture-main.9

Authors: Nathan Schneider, Antonios Anastasopoulos

Institution: Georgetown University

Language: English

Topic: Natural Language Processing Techniques

Subfield: Artificial Intelligence

Field: Computer Science

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: gold

Funder: National Science Foundation

Awards: CAREER: Leveraging Grammar Books to Develop Language Technologies for Data-Scarce Languages, CAREER: Metalinguistic Natural Language Understanding

OpenAlex ID: W7166847163