How Do Language Models Represent and Use Phonological Information for Allomorph Selection?
Read the original on arXiv Computation and Language →Language models trained on tokenized text still reliably produce morphemes whose form depends on phonology, but it was unclear whether this relies on memorization or rule-like generalization. The study shows that for the English indefinite article a/an, the phonological condition is encoded along a single linear direction in trigger-token embeddings, causally drives article selection in token-level wug tests, and is used by the model to forecast the upcoming trigger token’s phonological feature for article choice. The authors further investigate whether this rule-like generalization extends to allomorph selection in other languages and to explicit phonological judgment, offering a mechanistic account that separates generation-time ability from metalinguistic judgments.
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