A visual observation on the geometry of UMAP projections of the difference vectors of antonym and synonym word pair embeddings

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Main Author: Luisto, Rami
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Luisto, Rami
author_facet Luisto, Rami
contents Antonyms, or opposites, are sometimes defined as \emph{word pairs that have all of the same contextually relevant properties but one}. Seeing how transformer models seem to encode concepts as directions, this begs the question if one can detect ``antonymity'' in the geometry of the embedding vectors of word pairs, especially based on their difference vectors. Such geometrical studies are then naturally contrasted by comparing antonymic pairs to their opposites; synonyms. This paper started as an exploratory project on the complexity of the systems needed to detect the geometry of the embedding vectors of antonymic word pairs. What we now report is a curious ``swirl'' that appears across embedding models in a somewhat specific projection configuration.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_24150
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A visual observation on the geometry of UMAP projections of the difference vectors of antonym and synonym word pair embeddings
Luisto, Rami
Computation and Language
Machine Learning
68T50 (Primary) 62H30, 68T09 (Secondary)
Antonyms, or opposites, are sometimes defined as \emph{word pairs that have all of the same contextually relevant properties but one}. Seeing how transformer models seem to encode concepts as directions, this begs the question if one can detect ``antonymity'' in the geometry of the embedding vectors of word pairs, especially based on their difference vectors. Such geometrical studies are then naturally contrasted by comparing antonymic pairs to their opposites; synonyms. This paper started as an exploratory project on the complexity of the systems needed to detect the geometry of the embedding vectors of antonymic word pairs. What we now report is a curious ``swirl'' that appears across embedding models in a somewhat specific projection configuration.
title A visual observation on the geometry of UMAP projections of the difference vectors of antonym and synonym word pair embeddings
topic Computation and Language
Machine Learning
68T50 (Primary) 62H30, 68T09 (Secondary)
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.24150