@inproceedings{lakretz-etal-2022-transformers,
title = "Can Transformers Process Recursive Nested Constructions, Like Humans?",
author = "Lakretz, Yair and
Desbordes, Th{\'e}o and
Hupkes, Dieuwke and
Dehaene, Stanislas",
editor = "Calzolari, Nicoletta and
Huang, Chu-Ren and
Kim, Hansaem and
Pustejovsky, James and
Wanner, Leo and
Choi, Key-Sun and
Ryu, Pum-Mo and
Chen, Hsin-Hsi and
Donatelli, Lucia and
Ji, Heng and
Kurohashi, Sadao and
Paggio, Patrizia and
Xue, Nianwen and
Kim, Seokhwan and
Hahm, Younggyun and
He, Zhong and
Lee, Tony Kyungil and
Santus, Enrico and
Bond, Francis and
Na, Seung-Hoon",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the 29th International Conference on Computational Linguistics",
month = oct,
year = "2022",
address = "Gyeongju, Republic of Korea",
publisher = "International Committee on Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2022.coling-1.285",
pages = "3226--3232",
abstract = "Recursive processing is considered a hallmark of human linguistic abilities. A recent study evaluated recursive processing in recurrent neural language models (RNN-LMs) and showed that such models perform below chance level on embedded dependencies within nested constructions {--} a prototypical example of recursion in natural language. Here, we study if state-of-the-art Transformer LMs do any better. We test eight different Transformer LMs on two different types of nested constructions, which differ in whether the embedded (inner) dependency is short or long range. We find that Transformers achieve near-perfect performance on short-range embedded dependencies, significantly better than previous results reported for RNN-LMs and humans. However, on \textit{long-range} embedded dependencies, Transformers{'} performance sharply drops below chance level. Remarkably, the addition of only three words to the embedded dependency caused Transformers to fall from near-perfect to below-chance performance. Taken together, our results reveal how brittle syntactic processing is in Transformers, compared to humans.",
}
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<modsCollection xmlns="http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3">
<mods ID="lakretz-etal-2022-transformers">
<titleInfo>
<title>Can Transformers Process Recursive Nested Constructions, Like Humans?</title>
</titleInfo>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Yair</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Lakretz</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Théo</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Desbordes</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Dieuwke</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Hupkes</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Stanislas</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Dehaene</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<originInfo>
<dateIssued>2022-10</dateIssued>
</originInfo>
<typeOfResource>text</typeOfResource>
<relatedItem type="host">
<titleInfo>
<title>Proceedings of the 29th International Conference on Computational Linguistics</title>
</titleInfo>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Nicoletta</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Calzolari</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Chu-Ren</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Huang</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Hansaem</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Kim</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">James</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Pustejovsky</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Leo</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Wanner</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Key-Sun</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Choi</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Pum-Mo</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Ryu</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Hsin-Hsi</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Chen</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Lucia</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Donatelli</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Heng</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Ji</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Sadao</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Kurohashi</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Patrizia</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Paggio</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Nianwen</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Xue</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Seokhwan</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Kim</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Younggyun</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Hahm</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Zhong</namePart>
<namePart type="family">He</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Tony</namePart>
<namePart type="given">Kyungil</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Lee</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Enrico</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Santus</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Francis</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Bond</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Seung-Hoon</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Na</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<originInfo>
<publisher>International Committee on Computational Linguistics</publisher>
<place>
<placeTerm type="text">Gyeongju, Republic of Korea</placeTerm>
</place>
</originInfo>
<genre authority="marcgt">conference publication</genre>
</relatedItem>
<abstract>Recursive processing is considered a hallmark of human linguistic abilities. A recent study evaluated recursive processing in recurrent neural language models (RNN-LMs) and showed that such models perform below chance level on embedded dependencies within nested constructions – a prototypical example of recursion in natural language. Here, we study if state-of-the-art Transformer LMs do any better. We test eight different Transformer LMs on two different types of nested constructions, which differ in whether the embedded (inner) dependency is short or long range. We find that Transformers achieve near-perfect performance on short-range embedded dependencies, significantly better than previous results reported for RNN-LMs and humans. However, on long-range embedded dependencies, Transformers’ performance sharply drops below chance level. Remarkably, the addition of only three words to the embedded dependency caused Transformers to fall from near-perfect to below-chance performance. Taken together, our results reveal how brittle syntactic processing is in Transformers, compared to humans.</abstract>
<identifier type="citekey">lakretz-etal-2022-transformers</identifier>
<location>
<url>https://aclanthology.org/2022.coling-1.285</url>
</location>
<part>
<date>2022-10</date>
<extent unit="page">
<start>3226</start>
<end>3232</end>
</extent>
</part>
</mods>
</modsCollection>
%0 Conference Proceedings
%T Can Transformers Process Recursive Nested Constructions, Like Humans?
%A Lakretz, Yair
%A Desbordes, Théo
%A Hupkes, Dieuwke
%A Dehaene, Stanislas
%Y Calzolari, Nicoletta
%Y Huang, Chu-Ren
%Y Kim, Hansaem
%Y Pustejovsky, James
%Y Wanner, Leo
%Y Choi, Key-Sun
%Y Ryu, Pum-Mo
%Y Chen, Hsin-Hsi
%Y Donatelli, Lucia
%Y Ji, Heng
%Y Kurohashi, Sadao
%Y Paggio, Patrizia
%Y Xue, Nianwen
%Y Kim, Seokhwan
%Y Hahm, Younggyun
%Y He, Zhong
%Y Lee, Tony Kyungil
%Y Santus, Enrico
%Y Bond, Francis
%Y Na, Seung-Hoon
%S Proceedings of the 29th International Conference on Computational Linguistics
%D 2022
%8 October
%I International Committee on Computational Linguistics
%C Gyeongju, Republic of Korea
%F lakretz-etal-2022-transformers
%X Recursive processing is considered a hallmark of human linguistic abilities. A recent study evaluated recursive processing in recurrent neural language models (RNN-LMs) and showed that such models perform below chance level on embedded dependencies within nested constructions – a prototypical example of recursion in natural language. Here, we study if state-of-the-art Transformer LMs do any better. We test eight different Transformer LMs on two different types of nested constructions, which differ in whether the embedded (inner) dependency is short or long range. We find that Transformers achieve near-perfect performance on short-range embedded dependencies, significantly better than previous results reported for RNN-LMs and humans. However, on long-range embedded dependencies, Transformers’ performance sharply drops below chance level. Remarkably, the addition of only three words to the embedded dependency caused Transformers to fall from near-perfect to below-chance performance. Taken together, our results reveal how brittle syntactic processing is in Transformers, compared to humans.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2022.coling-1.285
%P 3226-3232
Markdown (Informal)
[Can Transformers Process Recursive Nested Constructions, Like Humans?](https://aclanthology.org/2022.coling-1.285) (Lakretz et al., COLING 2022)
ACL