The Holistic Storage of Verb+Up Phrases in Text-based and Audio-based Language Models

Abstract:A crucial aspect of linguistic capability is the ability to trade off between stored representations and abstract knowledge: one must retrieve learned representations, but also generate novel ones by applying productive rules. While recent work has examined abstract knowledge in language models, holistic storage of multi-word units has received far less attention. We probe internal representations in text-based LLMs and an ASR model, testing whether V+up phrasal verbs develop distinct representations as a function of frequency and predictability. All models show evidence of holistic storage driven by frequency and predictability, further supporting usage-based theories of language.

Computation and Language (cs.CL)

arXiv:2606.13993 [cs.CL]

(or arXiv:2606.13993v2 [cs.CL] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2606.13993 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite

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