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Main Authors: Kato, Daichi, Ueda, Ryo, Miyao, Yusuke
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.22366
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author Kato, Daichi
Ueda, Ryo
Miyao, Yusuke
author_facet Kato, Daichi
Ueda, Ryo
Miyao, Yusuke
contents If humans understood language by randomly selecting parsing actions, it might have been necessary to construct a robust symbolic system capable of being interpreted under any hierarchical structure. However, human parsing strategies do not seem to follow such a random pattern. Why is that the case? In fact, a previous study on emergent communication using models with hierarchical biases have reported that agents adopting random parsing strategies$\unicode{x2013}$ones that deviate significantly from human language comprehension$\unicode{x2013}$can achieve high communication accuracy. In this study, we investigate this issue by making two simple and natural modifications to the experimental setup: (I) we use more complex inputs that have hierarchical structures, such that random parsing makes semantic interpretation more difficult, and (II) we incorporate a surprisal-related term, which is known to influence the order of words and characters in natural language, into the objective function. With these changes, we evaluate whether agents employing random parsing strategies still maintain high communication accuracy.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_22366
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Why Are Parsing Actions for Understanding Message Hierarchies Not Random?
Kato, Daichi
Ueda, Ryo
Miyao, Yusuke
Computation and Language
If humans understood language by randomly selecting parsing actions, it might have been necessary to construct a robust symbolic system capable of being interpreted under any hierarchical structure. However, human parsing strategies do not seem to follow such a random pattern. Why is that the case? In fact, a previous study on emergent communication using models with hierarchical biases have reported that agents adopting random parsing strategies$\unicode{x2013}$ones that deviate significantly from human language comprehension$\unicode{x2013}$can achieve high communication accuracy. In this study, we investigate this issue by making two simple and natural modifications to the experimental setup: (I) we use more complex inputs that have hierarchical structures, such that random parsing makes semantic interpretation more difficult, and (II) we incorporate a surprisal-related term, which is known to influence the order of words and characters in natural language, into the objective function. With these changes, we evaluate whether agents employing random parsing strategies still maintain high communication accuracy.
title Why Are Parsing Actions for Understanding Message Hierarchies Not Random?
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.22366