Speaking of Language: Reflections on Metalanguage Research in NLP
Nathan Schneider, Antonios Anastasopoulos
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.