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        <title>Language Models at the Syntax-Semantics Interface: A Case Study of the Long-Distance Binding of Chinese Reflexive Ziji</title>
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    <abstract>This paper explores whether language models can effectively resolve the complex binding patterns of the Mandarin Chinese reflexive ziji, which are constrained by both syntactic and semantic factors. We construct a dataset of 320 synthetic sentences using templates and examples from syntactic literature, along with 360 natural sentences from the BCC corpus. Evaluating 21 language models against this dataset and comparing their performance to judgments from native Mandarin speakers, we find that none of the models consistently replicates human-like judgments. The results indicate that existing language models tend to rely heavily on sequential cues, though not always favoring the closest strings, and often overlooking subtle semantic and syntactic constraints. They tend to be more sensitive to noun-related than verb-related semantics.</abstract>
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T Language Models at the Syntax-Semantics Interface: A Case Study of the Long-Distance Binding of Chinese Reflexive Ziji
%A Yang, Xiulin
%Y Rambow, Owen
%Y Wanner, Leo
%Y Apidianaki, Marianna
%Y Al-Khalifa, Hend
%Y Eugenio, Barbara Di
%Y Schockaert, Steven
%S Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Computational Linguistics
%D 2025
%8 January
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C Abu Dhabi, UAE
%F yang-2025-language
%X This paper explores whether language models can effectively resolve the complex binding patterns of the Mandarin Chinese reflexive ziji, which are constrained by both syntactic and semantic factors. We construct a dataset of 320 synthetic sentences using templates and examples from syntactic literature, along with 360 natural sentences from the BCC corpus. Evaluating 21 language models against this dataset and comparing their performance to judgments from native Mandarin speakers, we find that none of the models consistently replicates human-like judgments. The results indicate that existing language models tend to rely heavily on sequential cues, though not always favoring the closest strings, and often overlooking subtle semantic and syntactic constraints. They tend to be more sensitive to noun-related than verb-related semantics.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2025.coling-main.257/
%P 3808-3824

Markdown (Informal)

[Language Models at the Syntax-Semantics Interface: A Case Study of the Long-Distance Binding of Chinese Reflexive Ziji](https://aclanthology.org/2025.coling-main.257/) (Yang, COLING 2025)

• Language Models at the Syntax-Semantics Interface: A Case Study of the Long-Distance Binding of Chinese Reflexive Ziji (Yang, COLING 2025)

ACL

• Xiulin Yang. 2025. Language Models at the Syntax-Semantics Interface: A Case Study of the Long-Distance Binding of Chinese Reflexive Ziji. In Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Computational Linguistics, pages 3808–3824, Abu Dhabi, UAE. Association for Computational Linguistics.