Grammars & Parsing
Self-Correction Makes LLMs Better Parsers
Zhang, Ziyan, Hou, Yang, Gong, Chen, Li, Zhenghua
Large language models (LLMs) have achieved remarkable success across various natural language processing (NLP) tasks. However, recent studies suggest that they still face challenges in performing fundamental NLP tasks essential for deep language understanding, particularly syntactic parsing. In this paper, we conduct an in-depth analysis of LLM parsing capabilities, delving into the specific shortcomings of their parsing results. We find that LLMs may stem from limitations to fully leverage grammar rules in existing treebanks, which restricts their capability to generate valid syntactic structures. To help LLMs acquire knowledge without additional training, we propose a self-correction method that leverages grammar rules from existing treebanks to guide LLMs in correcting previous errors. Specifically, we automatically detect potential errors and dynamically search for relevant rules, offering hints and examples to guide LLMs in making corrections themselves. Experimental results on three datasets with various LLMs, demonstrate that our method significantly improves performance in both in-domain and cross-domain settings on the English and Chinese datasets.
Persian Abstract Meaning Representation: Annotation Guidelines and Gold Standard Dataset
Takhshid, Reza, Azin, Tara, Shojaei, Razieh, Bahrani, Mohammad
This paper introduces the Persian Abstract Meaning Representation (AMR) guidelines, a detailed guide for annotating Persian sentences with AMR, focusing on the necessary adaptations to fit Persian's unique syntactic structures. We discuss the development process of a Persian AMR gold standard dataset consisting of 1,562 sentences created following the guidelines. By examining the language specifications and nuances that distinguish AMR annotations of a low-resource language like Persian, we shed light on the challenges and limitations of developing a universal meaning representation framework. The guidelines and the dataset introduced in this study highlight such challenges, aiming to advance the field.
A Computational Cognitive Model for Processing Repetitions of Hierarchical Relations
Ren, Zeng, Guan, Xinyi, Rohrmeier, Martin
Patterns are fundamental to human cognition, enabling the recognition of structure and regularity across diverse domains. In this work, we focus on structural repeats, patterns that arise from the repetition of hierarchical relations within sequential data, and develop a candidate computational model of how humans detect and understand such structural repeats. Based on a weighted deduction system, our model infers the minimal generative process of a given sequence in the form of a Template program, a formalism that enriches the context-free grammar with repetition combinators. Such representation efficiently encodes the repetition of sub-computations in a recursive manner. As a proof of concept, we demonstrate the expressiveness of our model on short sequences from music and action planning. The proposed model offers broader insights into the mental representations and cognitive mechanisms underlying human pattern recognition.
Investigating Syntactic Biases in Multilingual Transformers with RC Attachment Ambiguities in Italian and English
Kamerath, Michael, De Santo, Aniello
This paper leverages past sentence processing studies to investigate whether monolingual and multilingual LLMs show human-like preferences when presented with examples of relative clause attachment ambiguities in Italian and English. Furthermore, we test whether these preferences can be modulated by lexical factors (the type of verb/noun in the matrix clause) which have been shown to be tied to subtle constraints on syntactic and semantic relations. Our results overall showcase how LLM behavior varies interestingly across models, but also general failings of these models in correctly capturing human-like preferences. In light of these results, we argue that RC attachment is the ideal benchmark for cross-linguistic investigations of LLMs' linguistic knowledge and biases.
Reduction of Supervision for Biomedical Knowledge Discovery
Theodoropoulos, Christos, Coman, Andrei Catalin, Henderson, James, Moens, Marie-Francine
Knowledge discovery is hindered by the increasing volume of publications and the scarcity of extensive annotated data. To tackle the challenge of information overload, it is essential to employ automated methods for knowledge extraction and processing. Finding the right balance between the level of supervision and the effectiveness of models poses a significant challenge. While supervised techniques generally result in better performance, they have the major drawback of demanding labeled data. This requirement is labor-intensive and time-consuming and hinders scalability when exploring new domains. In this context, our study addresses the challenge of identifying semantic relationships between biomedical entities (e.g., diseases, proteins) in unstructured text while minimizing dependency on supervision. We introduce a suite of unsupervised algorithms based on dependency trees and attention mechanisms and employ a range of pointwise binary classification methods. Transitioning from weakly supervised to fully unsupervised settings, we assess the methods' ability to learn from data with noisy labels. The evaluation on biomedical benchmark datasets explores the effectiveness of the methods. Our approach tackles a central issue in knowledge discovery: balancing performance with minimal supervision. By gradually decreasing supervision, we assess the robustness of pointwise binary classification techniques in handling noisy labels, revealing their capability to shift from weakly supervised to entirely unsupervised scenarios. Comprehensive benchmarking offers insights into the effectiveness of these techniques, suggesting an encouraging direction toward adaptable knowledge discovery systems, representing progress in creating data-efficient methodologies for extracting useful insights when annotated data is limited.
AMNet: An Acoustic Model Network for Enhanced Mandarin Speech Synthesis
Cao, Yubing, Yu, Yinfeng, Li, Yongming, Wang, Liejun
This paper presents AMNet, an Acoustic Model Network designed to improve the performance of Mandarin speech synthesis by incorporating phrase structure annotation and local convolution modules. AMNet builds upon the FastSpeech 2 architecture while addressing the challenge of local context modeling, which is crucial for capturing intricate speech features such as pauses, stress, and intonation. By embedding a phrase structure parser into the model and introducing a local convolution module, AMNet enhances the model's sensitivity to local information. Additionally, AMNet decouples tonal characteristics from phonemes, providing explicit guidance for tone modeling, which improves tone accuracy and pronunciation. Experimental results demonstrate that AMNet outperforms baseline models in subjective and objective evaluations. The proposed model achieves superior Mean Opinion Scores (MOS), lower Mel Cepstral Distortion (MCD), and improved fundamental frequency fitting $F0 (R^2)$, confirming its ability to generate high-quality, natural, and expressive Mandarin speech.
Domain Specific Question to SQL Conversion with Embedded Data Balancing Technique
Jyothi, null, Murthy, T. Satyanarayana
The rise of deep learning in natural language processing has fostered the creation of text to structured query language models composed of an encoder and a decoder. Researchers have experimented with various intermediate processing like schema linking, table type aware, value extract. To generate accurate SQL results for the user question. However error analysis performed on the failed cases on these systems shows, 29 percentage of the errors would be because the system was unable to understand the values expressed by the user in their question. This challenge affects the generation of accurate SQL queries, especially when dealing with domain-specific terms and specific value conditions, where traditional methods struggle to maintain consistency and precision. To overcome these obstacles, proposed two intermediations like implementing data balancing technique and over sampling domain-specific queries which would refine the model architecture to enhance value recognition and fine tuning the model for domain-specific questions. This proposed solution achieved 10.98 percentage improvement in accuracy of the model performance compared to the state of the art model tested on WikiSQL dataset. to convert the user question accurately to SQL queries. Applying oversampling technique on the domain-specific questions shown a significant improvement as compared with traditional approaches.
Proposing TAGbank as a Corpus of Tree-Adjoining Grammar Derivations
The development of lexicalized grammars, particularly Tree-Adjoining Grammar (TAG), has significantly advanced our understanding of syntax and semantics in natural language processing (NLP). While existing syntactic resources like the Penn Treebank and Universal Dependencies offer extensive annotations for phrase-structure and dependency parsing, there is a lack of large-scale corpora grounded in lexicalized grammar formalisms. To address this gap, we introduce TAGbank, a corpus of TAG derivations automatically extracted from existing syntactic treebanks. This paper outlines a methodology for mapping phrase-structure annotations to TAG derivations, leveraging the generative power of TAG to support parsing, grammar induction, and semantic analysis. Our approach builds on the work of CCGbank, extending it to incorporate the unique structural properties of TAG, including its transparent derivation trees and its ability to capture long-distance dependencies. We also discuss the challenges involved in the extraction process, including ensuring consistency across treebank schemes and dealing with language-specific syntactic idiosyncrasies. Finally, we propose the future extension of TAGbank to include multilingual corpora, focusing on the Penn Korean and Penn Chinese Treebanks, to explore the cross-linguistic application of TAG's formalism. By providing a robust, derivation-based resource, TAGbank aims to support a wide range of computational tasks and contribute to the theoretical understanding of TAG's generative capacity.
Towards an Understanding of Context Utilization in Code Intelligence
Wang, Yanlin, Duan, Kefeng, Zheng, Dewu, Shi, Ensheng, Zhang, Fengji, Wang, Yanli, Chen, Jiachi, Liu, Xilin, Ma, Yuchi, Zhang, Hongyu, Wang, Qianxiang, Zheng, Zibin
Code intelligence is an emerging domain in software engineering, aiming to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of various code-related tasks. Recent research suggests that incorporating contextual information beyond the basic original task inputs (i.e., source code) can substantially enhance model performance. Such contextual signals may be obtained directly or indirectly from sources such as API documentation or intermediate representations like abstract syntax trees can significantly improve the effectiveness of code intelligence. Despite growing academic interest, there is a lack of systematic analysis of context in code intelligence. To address this gap, we conduct an extensive literature review of 146 relevant studies published between September 2007 and August 2024. Our investigation yields four main contributions. (1) A quantitative analysis of the research landscape, including publication trends, venues, and the explored domains; (2) A novel taxonomy of context types used in code intelligence; (3) A task-oriented analysis investigating context integration strategies across diverse code intelligence tasks; (4) A critical evaluation of evaluation methodologies for context-aware methods. Based on these findings, we identify fundamental challenges in context utilization in current code intelligence systems and propose a research roadmap that outlines key opportunities for future research.
Bringing Structure to Naturalness: On the Naturalness of ASTs
Pârţachi, Profir-Petru, Sugiyama, Mahito
Source code comes in different shapes and forms. Previous research has already shown code to be more predictable than natural language as well as highlighted its statistical predictability at the token level: source code can be natural. More recently, the structure of code -- control flow, syntax graphs, abstract syntax trees etc. -- has been successfully used to improve the state-of-the-art on numerous tasks: code suggestion, code summarisation, method naming etc. This body of work implicitly assumes that structured representations of code are similarly statistically predictable, i.e. that a structured view of code is also natural. We consider that this view should be made explicit and propose directly studying the Structured Naturalness Hypothesis. Beyond just naming existing research that assumes this hypothesis and formulating it, we also provide evidence in the case of trees: TreeLSTM models over ASTs for some languages, such as Ruby, are competitive with $n$-gram models while handling the syntax token issue highlighted by previous research 'for free'. For other languages, such as Java or Python, we find tree models to perform worse, suggesting that downstream task improvement is uncorrelated to the language modelling task. Further, we show how such naturalness signals can be employed for near state-of-the-art results on just-in-time defect prediction while forgoing manual feature engineering work.