Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Shao, Yutong, Nakashole, Ndapa
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.02389
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866916191024447488
author Shao, Yutong
Nakashole, Ndapa
author_facet Shao, Yutong
Nakashole, Ndapa
contents Structured data, prevalent in tables, databases, and knowledge graphs, poses a significant challenge in its representation. With the advent of large language models (LLMs), there has been a shift towards linearization-based methods, which process structured data as sequential token streams, diverging from approaches that explicitly model structure, often as a graph. Crucially, there remains a gap in our understanding of how these linearization-based methods handle structured data, which is inherently non-linear. This work investigates the linear handling of structured data in encoder-decoder language models, specifically T5. Our findings reveal the model's ability to mimic human-designed processes such as schema linking and syntax prediction, indicating a deep, meaningful learning of structure beyond simple token sequencing. We also uncover insights into the model's internal mechanisms, including the ego-centric nature of structure node encodings and the potential for model compression due to modality fusion redundancy. Overall, this work sheds light on the inner workings of linearization-based methods and could potentially provide guidance for future research.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2404_02389
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle On Linearizing Structured Data in Encoder-Decoder Language Models: Insights from Text-to-SQL
Shao, Yutong
Nakashole, Ndapa
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Structured data, prevalent in tables, databases, and knowledge graphs, poses a significant challenge in its representation. With the advent of large language models (LLMs), there has been a shift towards linearization-based methods, which process structured data as sequential token streams, diverging from approaches that explicitly model structure, often as a graph. Crucially, there remains a gap in our understanding of how these linearization-based methods handle structured data, which is inherently non-linear. This work investigates the linear handling of structured data in encoder-decoder language models, specifically T5. Our findings reveal the model's ability to mimic human-designed processes such as schema linking and syntax prediction, indicating a deep, meaningful learning of structure beyond simple token sequencing. We also uncover insights into the model's internal mechanisms, including the ego-centric nature of structure node encodings and the potential for model compression due to modality fusion redundancy. Overall, this work sheds light on the inner workings of linearization-based methods and could potentially provide guidance for future research.
title On Linearizing Structured Data in Encoder-Decoder Language Models: Insights from Text-to-SQL
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.02389