LinguistAgent: A Reflective Multi-Model Platform for Automated Linguistic Annotation

Abstract: Data annotation remains a significant bottleneck in the Humanities and Social Sciences, particularly for complex semantic tasks such as metaphor identification. While LLMs show promise, a significant gap remains between the theoretical capability of LLMs and their practical utility for researchers. This paper introduces LinguistAgent, an integrated, user-friendly platform that leverages a reflective multi-model architecture to automate linguistic annotation. The system implements a dual-agent workflow, comprising an Annotator and a Reviewer, to simulate a professional peer-review process. LinguistAgent supports comparative experiments across three paradigms: Prompt Engineering (Zero/Few-shot), Retrieval-Augmented Generation, and Fine-tuning. We demonstrate LinguistAgent's efficacy using the task of metaphor identification as an example, providing real-time token-level evaluation (Precision, Recall, and $F_1$ score) against human gold standards. The application and codes are released on https://github.com/Bingru-Li/LinguistAgent.