LLMs as Linguistic Probes: A Graduate Student's Guide to Advanced Syntax, Semantics, and Efficient Fine-Tuning

The intersection of large language models (LLMs) and advanced linguistics has moved beyond philosophical debate into rigorous empirical territory. For graduate students in computational linguistics, psycholinguistics, or NLP, understanding how and when to use LLMs as linguistic tools—and when to avoid them—is now a core methodological skill. This article distills recent benchmark research, architectural innovations, and practical fine-tuning strategies into a concrete guide for graduate-level wo...