Semantic Substrate Dynamics Theory: An Operator-Theoretic Framework for Geometric Semantic Drift

arXiv:2602.18699v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Studies of semantic drift report heterogeneous signals, including embedding displacement, neighbor change, distributional divergence, and recursive trajectory instability, without a shared account that relates them. Semantic Substrate Dynamics Theory (SSDT) treats these signals as observables of one time-indexed substrate, St = (X, dt, Pt), that couples embedding geometry to a local diffusion kernel. The contribution is commensurability with a mechanism layer: the substrate separates within-basin churn from basin crossing, recursion-induced instability, and intervention-order effects, distinctions that a single detection score does not recover. Coarse Ricci curvature functions as a dense structural descriptor of basin and bridge geometry across the graph, and bridge mass, a node-level aggregate of incident negative curvature, functions as a sparse descriptor of the genuine bridge structure that is typically uncommon in embedding graphs. For recursive generation, node displacement relative to an origin decomposes into a radial component and a tangential component, which separates bounded departure from continuing reinterpretation. The predictions are stated in falsifiable form with a pre-declared rejection rule, and the predicted leading indicator of future rewiring is a local density statistic rather than the curvature aggregate. This manuscript provides the formal model, the assumptions, the observable roles, and the test contracts; empirical performance is deferred.

Abstract:Studies of semantic drift report heterogeneous signals, including embedding displacement, neighbor change, distributional divergence, and recursive trajectory instability, without a shared account that relates them. Semantic Substrate Dynamics Theory (SSDT) treats these signals as observables of one time-indexed substrate, St = (X, dt, Pt), that couples embedding geometry to a local diffusion kernel. The contribution is commensurability with a mechanism layer: the substrate separates within-basin churn from basin crossing, recursion-induced instability, and intervention-order effects, distinctions that a single detection score does not recover. Coarse Ricci curvature functions as a dense structural descriptor of basin and bridge geometry across the graph, and bridge mass, a node-level aggregate of incident negative curvature, functions as a sparse descriptor of the genuine bridge structure that is typically uncommon in embedding graphs. For recursive generation, node displacement relative to an origin decomposes into a radial component and a tangential component, which separates bounded departure from continuing reinterpretation. The predictions are stated in falsifiable form with a pre-declared rejection rule, and the predicted leading indicator of future rewiring is a local density statistic rather than the curvature aggregate. This manuscript provides the formal model, the assumptions, the observable roles, and the test contracts; empirical performance is deferred.

Computation and Language (cs.CL); Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI)

arXiv:2602.18699 [cs.CL]

(or arXiv:2602.18699v2 [cs.CL] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2602.18699 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite

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Semantic Substrate Dynamics Theory: An Operator-Theoretic Framework for Geometric Semantic Drift

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