The study investigates whether pretrained transformer models encode functional words—such as pronouns and adverbs—in a way that mirrors human usage. By comparing embeddings of nouns with those of their functional counterparts in both isolated and parallel sentences, the authors find that functional words occupy a central yet distinct position in embedding space and that parallel lexicalized and functional sentences reside in different subspaces. Experiments show that only a mixed training set of functional and lexicalized sentences reveals shared syntactic and semantic structure, whereas training on either type alone fails to capture this parallelism.
By Giuseppe Samo, Vivi Nastase, Paola Merlo
arXiv:2609.37635v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: LLMs have been studied in recent linguistics as potential models of humans' linguistic abilities. Here we discuss an entirely different use of AI, name...
By Emmanuel Chemla, Benjamin Spector, Alexandros Kalomoiros, Philippe Schlenker
arXiv:2601.19926v3 Announce Type: replace-cross
Abstract: We present a systematic review of 337 articles evaluating the syntactic abilities of Transformer-based language models (TLMs), reporting on o...
By Nora Graichen, Iria de-Dios-Flores, Gemma Boleda
arXiv:2607. 10248v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Language builds discourse contexts other than the actual: a painting, a belief, a memory, a hypothetical.
By Oliver Steele, Jiangtao Wen, Yuxing Han
The article examines chatbots as partners in problem‑solving conversations, arguing that basic chatbots—comprising a large language model (LLM) and a simple interface—are multifaceted but cannot match human cognitive flexibility. Drawing on Aggregation Dynamics, Cognitive Linguistics, Neuropsychology, and Psychology, the authors describe how LLMs encode artificial metaphorical problem propagations from training data, which only partially imitate human thinking. They conclude that further LLM development will not yield true thinking partners, yet chatbots are widely used, making their understanding socially and politically important.
By S. F. M. van Vlijmen, H. D. Lethe jr
arXiv:2606. 14398v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Mixture-of-experts (MoE) layers enable the scaling of transformer models while keeping the inference compute fixed.
By Yongli Xiang, Vinoth Nandakumar, Yunzhi Yao, Peike Li, Tongliang Liu
arXiv:2608. 03921v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: This paper offers a new interpretation of the Transformer during inference.
By Marco Giunti, Fabrizia Giulia Garavaglia
arXiv:2606.27228v2 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: Formal semantics has shown that sentence meanings arise by recursively composing lexical meanings, yet much of the literature on semantic universal...
By Fausto Carcassi
arXiv:2608. 03921v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: This paper offers a new interpretation of the Transformer during inference.
By Marco Giunti, Fabrizia Giulia Garavaglia
Formal semantics has shown that sentence meanings arise by recursively composing lexical meanings, yet much of the literature on semantic universals models either lexicons with fixed signal structures or holistic composition without interpretable lexical parts. We introduce a framework that integrates this fundamental insight of formal semantics in evolutionary modeling, by allowing lexical meanings and a composition function to co-evolve under pressures for conceptual simplicity and communicative accuracy.
arXiv:2609.37497v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Modern transformer models excel at capturing semantic relationships through sentence embeddings, yet their ability to perform pragmatic reasoning remai...
By Stefania Butnaru, Claudiu Creanga
arXiv:2606. 07722v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: This article offers a perspective on the nature of chatbots as genuine conversation partners when discussing problems in relation to their solutions.
By S. F. M. van Vlijmen, H. D. Lethe jr