@inproceedings{du-etal-2024-language,
title = "When is a Language Process a Language Model?",
author = "Du, Li and
Lee, Holden and
Eisner, Jason and
Cotterell, Ryan",
editor = "Ku, Lun-Wei and
Martins, Andre and
Srikumar, Vivek",
booktitle = "Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics ACL 2024",
month = aug,
year = "2024",
address = "Bangkok, Thailand and virtual meeting",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2024.findings-acl.659",
pages = "11083--11094",
abstract = "A language model may be viewed as a $\Sigma$-valued stochastic process for some alphabet $\Sigma$.However, in some pathological situations, such a stochastic process may {``}leak{''} probability mass onto the set of infinite strings and hence is not equivalent to the conventional view of a language model as a distribution over ordinary (finite) strings.Such ill-behaved language processes are referred to as *non-tight* in the literature.In this work, we study conditions of tightness through the lens of stochastic processes.In particular, by regarding the symbol as marking a stopping time and using results from martingale theory, we give characterizations of tightness that generalize our previous work [(Du et al. 2023)](https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.10502).",
}
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<abstract>A language model may be viewed as a Σ-valued stochastic process for some alphabet Σ.However, in some pathological situations, such a stochastic process may “leak” probability mass onto the set of infinite strings and hence is not equivalent to the conventional view of a language model as a distribution over ordinary (finite) strings.Such ill-behaved language processes are referred to as *non-tight* in the literature.In this work, we study conditions of tightness through the lens of stochastic processes.In particular, by regarding the symbol as marking a stopping time and using results from martingale theory, we give characterizations of tightness that generalize our previous work [(Du et al. 2023)](https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.10502).</abstract>
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T When is a Language Process a Language Model?
%A Du, Li
%A Lee, Holden
%A Eisner, Jason
%A Cotterell, Ryan
%Y Ku, Lun-Wei
%Y Martins, Andre
%Y Srikumar, Vivek
%S Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics ACL 2024
%D 2024
%8 August
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C Bangkok, Thailand and virtual meeting
%F du-etal-2024-language
%X A language model may be viewed as a Σ-valued stochastic process for some alphabet Σ.However, in some pathological situations, such a stochastic process may “leak” probability mass onto the set of infinite strings and hence is not equivalent to the conventional view of a language model as a distribution over ordinary (finite) strings.Such ill-behaved language processes are referred to as *non-tight* in the literature.In this work, we study conditions of tightness through the lens of stochastic processes.In particular, by regarding the symbol as marking a stopping time and using results from martingale theory, we give characterizations of tightness that generalize our previous work [(Du et al. 2023)](https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.10502).
%U https://aclanthology.org/2024.findings-acl.659
%P 11083-11094
Markdown (Informal)
[When is a Language Process a Language Model?](https://aclanthology.org/2024.findings-acl.659) (Du et al., Findings 2024)
ACL
- Li Du, Holden Lee, Jason Eisner, and Ryan Cotterell. 2024. When is a Language Process a Language Model?. In Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics ACL 2024, pages 11083–11094, Bangkok, Thailand and virtual meeting. Association for Computational Linguistics.