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Main Authors: Lee, So Young, Scheinberg, Russell, Shore, Amber, Agrawal, Ameeta
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.10838
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author Lee, So Young
Scheinberg, Russell
Shore, Amber
Agrawal, Ameeta
author_facet Lee, So Young
Scheinberg, Russell
Shore, Amber
Agrawal, Ameeta
contents This study explores how recent large language models (LLMs) navigate relative clause attachment {ambiguity} and use world knowledge biases for disambiguation in six typologically diverse languages: English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian, and Spanish. We describe the process of creating a novel dataset -- MultiWho -- for fine-grained evaluation of relative clause attachment preferences in ambiguous and unambiguous contexts. Our experiments with three LLMs indicate that, contrary to humans, LLMs consistently exhibit a preference for local attachment, displaying limited responsiveness to syntactic variations or language-specific attachment patterns. Although LLMs performed well in unambiguous cases, they rigidly prioritized world knowledge biases, lacking the flexibility of human language processing. These findings highlight the need for more diverse, pragmatically nuanced multilingual training to improve LLMs' handling of complex structures and human-like comprehension.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_10838
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Who Relies More on World Knowledge and Bias for Syntactic Ambiguity Resolution: Humans or LLMs?
Lee, So Young
Scheinberg, Russell
Shore, Amber
Agrawal, Ameeta
Computation and Language
This study explores how recent large language models (LLMs) navigate relative clause attachment {ambiguity} and use world knowledge biases for disambiguation in six typologically diverse languages: English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian, and Spanish. We describe the process of creating a novel dataset -- MultiWho -- for fine-grained evaluation of relative clause attachment preferences in ambiguous and unambiguous contexts. Our experiments with three LLMs indicate that, contrary to humans, LLMs consistently exhibit a preference for local attachment, displaying limited responsiveness to syntactic variations or language-specific attachment patterns. Although LLMs performed well in unambiguous cases, they rigidly prioritized world knowledge biases, lacking the flexibility of human language processing. These findings highlight the need for more diverse, pragmatically nuanced multilingual training to improve LLMs' handling of complex structures and human-like comprehension.
title Who Relies More on World Knowledge and Bias for Syntactic Ambiguity Resolution: Humans or LLMs?
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.10838