Regional Tiny Stories: Using Small Models to Compare Language Learning and Tokenizer Performance

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Main Authors: Patil, Nirvan, Inamdar, Malhar Abhay, Gosai, Agnivo, Pathak, Guruprasad, Joshi, Anish, Sagavekar, Aryan, Joshirao, Anish, Dandekar, Raj, Dandekar, Rajat, Panat, Sreedath
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Patil, Nirvan
Inamdar, Malhar Abhay
Gosai, Agnivo
Pathak, Guruprasad
Joshi, Anish
Sagavekar, Aryan
Joshirao, Anish
Dandekar, Raj
Dandekar, Rajat
Panat, Sreedath
author_facet Patil, Nirvan
Inamdar, Malhar Abhay
Gosai, Agnivo
Pathak, Guruprasad
Joshi, Anish
Sagavekar, Aryan
Joshirao, Anish
Dandekar, Raj
Dandekar, Rajat
Panat, Sreedath
contents Small Language Models (SLMs) offer efficient alternatives to LLMs for specific domains. The 2023 TinyStories study developed an English dataset that allows SLMs with 1 to 10 million parameters to produce coherent outputs. Our research expands this framework by translating the original dataset into Indian languages and creating synthetic data using LLMs. We focus on Hindi, Marathi, and Bengali, evaluating SLMs for regional language processing and understanding linguistic complexity. We show that SLMs efficiently process regional languages with significantly fewer parameters than LLMs, providing a complementary framework for ``inference based evaluation" of tokenization strategies and linguistic complexity. Our analysis shows that language-specific tokenizers outperform general-purpose ones for Indian languages. Empirical validations, supported by information-theoretic and morphological analyses, provides fundamental understanding behind the better performance of Hindi models over Marathi and Bengali. Additionally, we show that synthetic datasets outperform translated content for training SLMs. Correlation analyses reveal cross-linguistic patterns and language-specific relationships between creativity, grammatical precision, and narrative completeness. These findings advance both the practical application of SLMs to underserved languages and our theoretical understanding of neural language development.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2504_07989
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Regional Tiny Stories: Using Small Models to Compare Language Learning and Tokenizer Performance
Patil, Nirvan
Inamdar, Malhar Abhay
Gosai, Agnivo
Pathak, Guruprasad
Joshi, Anish
Sagavekar, Aryan
Joshirao, Anish
Dandekar, Raj
Dandekar, Rajat
Panat, Sreedath
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Small Language Models (SLMs) offer efficient alternatives to LLMs for specific domains. The 2023 TinyStories study developed an English dataset that allows SLMs with 1 to 10 million parameters to produce coherent outputs. Our research expands this framework by translating the original dataset into Indian languages and creating synthetic data using LLMs. We focus on Hindi, Marathi, and Bengali, evaluating SLMs for regional language processing and understanding linguistic complexity. We show that SLMs efficiently process regional languages with significantly fewer parameters than LLMs, providing a complementary framework for ``inference based evaluation" of tokenization strategies and linguistic complexity. Our analysis shows that language-specific tokenizers outperform general-purpose ones for Indian languages. Empirical validations, supported by information-theoretic and morphological analyses, provides fundamental understanding behind the better performance of Hindi models over Marathi and Bengali. Additionally, we show that synthetic datasets outperform translated content for training SLMs. Correlation analyses reveal cross-linguistic patterns and language-specific relationships between creativity, grammatical precision, and narrative completeness. These findings advance both the practical application of SLMs to underserved languages and our theoretical understanding of neural language development.
title Regional Tiny Stories: Using Small Models to Compare Language Learning and Tokenizer Performance
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.07989