Dynamic ordering in sequence generation in Transformers: experiments on low-resource Tagging scenarios

Abstract:This paper introduces TagInsert, a Transformer-based model that challenges the common left-to-right (L2R) generation paradigm in Transformers, for sequence labelling tasks where dependencies may not naturally align with a L2R order. TagInsert lifts the L2R constraint by removing the decoder-side attention mask and enabling the model to decide a preferred order of tag generation at inference time. We experiment on the common Part-of-Speech tagging and the more complex Combinatory Categorial Grammar (CCG) supertagging tasks on multiple languages and low-resource data settings. We show that, although encoder-only models like BERT remain strong performers for tagging tasks, TagInsert frequently outperforms a L2R encoder-decoder model, achieves results comparable to encoder-only models under data-scarce conditions, and shows better results on the long-tail of rare categories. Our analyses show that TagInsert alleviates error propagation typical of autoregressive models by learning to defer difficult predictions to later stages in the decoding process.

Computation and Language (cs.CL)

arXiv:2610.21862 [cs.CL]

(or arXiv:2610.21862v1 [cs.CL] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2610.21862 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website.

Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them.

Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs.