Beyond the limitations of any imaginable mechanism: large language models and psycholinguistics

Abstract: LLMs are not detailed models of human linguistic processing. They are, however, extremely successful at their primary task: providing a model for language. For this reason and because there are no animal models for language, LLMs are important in psycholinguistics: they are useful as a practical tool, as an illustrative comparative, and philosophically, as a basis for recasting the relationship between language and thought.