Learning Language through Grounding

Abstract

Grounding has been a long-standing concept in natural language processing (NLP) and computational linguistics (CL). This tutorial provides a historical overview and introduces recent advances in learning language through grounding, with a particular emphasis on the latter. We will begin by tracing the history of grounding and presenting a unified perspective on the term. In Parts II to IV, we will delve into recent progress in learning lexical semantics, syntax, and complex meanings through various forms of grounding. We will conclude by discussing future directions and open challenges, particularly those related to the growing trend of large language models and scaling.