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Main Authors: Karakaş, Sercan, Şimşek, Yusuf
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.24665
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author Karakaş, Sercan
Şimşek, Yusuf
author_facet Karakaş, Sercan
Şimşek, Yusuf
contents This paper investigates whether source trustworthiness shapes Turkish evidential morphology and whether large language models (LLMs) track this sensitivity. We study the past-domain contrast between -DI and -mIs in controlled cloze contexts where the information source is overtly external, while only its perceived reliability is manipulated (High-Trust vs. Low-Trust). In a human production experiment, native speakers of Turkish show a robust trust effect: High-Trust contexts yield relatively more -DI, whereas Low-Trust contexts yield relatively more -mIs, with the pattern remaining stable across sensitivity analyses. We then evaluate 10 LLMs in three prompting paradigms (open gap-fill, explicit past-tense gap-fill, and forced-choice A/B selection). LLM behavior is highly model- and prompt-dependent: some models show weak or local trust-consistent shifts, but effects are generally unstable, often reversed, and frequently overshadowed by output-compliance problems and strong base-rate suffix preferences. The results provide new evidence for a trust-/commitment-based account of Turkish evidentiality and reveal a clear human-LLM gap in source-sensitive evidential reasoning.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_24665
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Benchmarking Source-Sensitive Reasoning in Turkish: Humans and LLMs under Evidential Trust Manipulation
Karakaş, Sercan
Şimşek, Yusuf
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
This paper investigates whether source trustworthiness shapes Turkish evidential morphology and whether large language models (LLMs) track this sensitivity. We study the past-domain contrast between -DI and -mIs in controlled cloze contexts where the information source is overtly external, while only its perceived reliability is manipulated (High-Trust vs. Low-Trust). In a human production experiment, native speakers of Turkish show a robust trust effect: High-Trust contexts yield relatively more -DI, whereas Low-Trust contexts yield relatively more -mIs, with the pattern remaining stable across sensitivity analyses. We then evaluate 10 LLMs in three prompting paradigms (open gap-fill, explicit past-tense gap-fill, and forced-choice A/B selection). LLM behavior is highly model- and prompt-dependent: some models show weak or local trust-consistent shifts, but effects are generally unstable, often reversed, and frequently overshadowed by output-compliance problems and strong base-rate suffix preferences. The results provide new evidence for a trust-/commitment-based account of Turkish evidentiality and reveal a clear human-LLM gap in source-sensitive evidential reasoning.
title Benchmarking Source-Sensitive Reasoning in Turkish: Humans and LLMs under Evidential Trust Manipulation
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.24665