@inproceedings{boufouss-etal-2026-interpretable,
title = "Can We Do Interpretable {NLI} with Graphs Based on Atomic Propositions?",
author = "Boufouss, Younes and
Pommeret, Luc and
Gerald, Thomas and
Paroubek, Patrick and
Rosset, Sophie",
editor = "Kalo, Jan-Christoph and
Nakashole, Ndapa and
Razniewski, Simon and
Suchanek, Fabian M. and
Vlachos, Andreas and
McCallum, Andrew",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the 11th Workshop on Automated Knowledge Base Construction ({AKBC} 2026)",
month = oct,
year = "2026",
address = "Budapest, Hungary",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2026.akbc-1.17/",
pages = "234--246",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-464-4",
abstract = "While Large Language Model (LLM)-based Natural Language Inference (NLI) systems achieve high accuracy, their decision-making processes lack auditable structures. This paper explores whether NLI can be performed using only interpretable, graph-based representations of evidence. We introduce a fully graph-based pipeline where the classifier never directly processes the input text. Instead, sentences are decomposed into atomic propositions, converted into $\texttt{ConceptNet}$ triples via constrained decoding, and represented as three graphs per pair: premise, hypothesis, and a retrieved $\texttt{ConceptNet}$ subgraph. These graphs are then fed into a fine-tuned 0.8-billion-parameter language model. On the SNLI dataset, our pipeline achieves 89.7{\%} accuracy, just 1.9 points below an identically trained text-based model. On ANLI, it matches the published performance of $\texttt{RoBERTa-large}$ on rounds R2 and R3 (48.0{\%} vs.$\ 48.9\%$ and 44.9{\%} vs.$\ 44.4\%$) but trails by 16 points on R1, resulting in an overall gap of 9 to 14 points compared to its text counterpart. We term this gap the $\textit{price of interpretability}$ and demonstrate that it stems from representational limitations rather than data constraints. Ablation studies further reveal that graphs and text are complementary: combining both modalities achieves 92.1{\%} accuracy on SNLI."
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<abstract>While Large Language Model (LLM)-based Natural Language Inference (NLI) systems achieve high accuracy, their decision-making processes lack auditable structures. This paper explores whether NLI can be performed using only interpretable, graph-based representations of evidence. We introduce a fully graph-based pipeline where the classifier never directly processes the input text. Instead, sentences are decomposed into atomic propositions, converted into ConceptNet triples via constrained decoding, and represented as three graphs per pair: premise, hypothesis, and a retrieved ConceptNet subgraph. These graphs are then fed into a fine-tuned 0.8-billion-parameter language model. On the SNLI dataset, our pipeline achieves 89.7% accuracy, just 1.9 points below an identically trained text-based model. On ANLI, it matches the published performance of RoBERTa-large on rounds R2 and R3 (48.0% vs. 48.9% and 44.9% vs. 44.4%) but trails by 16 points on R1, resulting in an overall gap of 9 to 14 points compared to its text counterpart. We term this gap the price of interpretability and demonstrate that it stems from representational limitations rather than data constraints. Ablation studies further reveal that graphs and text are complementary: combining both modalities achieves 92.1% accuracy on SNLI.</abstract>
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T Can We Do Interpretable NLI with Graphs Based on Atomic Propositions?
%A Boufouss, Younes
%A Pommeret, Luc
%A Gerald, Thomas
%A Paroubek, Patrick
%A Rosset, Sophie
%Y Kalo, Jan-Christoph
%Y Nakashole, Ndapa
%Y Razniewski, Simon
%Y Suchanek, Fabian M.
%Y Vlachos, Andreas
%Y McCallum, Andrew
%S Proceedings of the 11th Workshop on Automated Knowledge Base Construction (AKBC 2026)
%D 2026
%8 October
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C Budapest, Hungary
%@ 979-8-89176-464-4
%F boufouss-etal-2026-interpretable
%X While Large Language Model (LLM)-based Natural Language Inference (NLI) systems achieve high accuracy, their decision-making processes lack auditable structures. This paper explores whether NLI can be performed using only interpretable, graph-based representations of evidence. We introduce a fully graph-based pipeline where the classifier never directly processes the input text. Instead, sentences are decomposed into atomic propositions, converted into ConceptNet triples via constrained decoding, and represented as three graphs per pair: premise, hypothesis, and a retrieved ConceptNet subgraph. These graphs are then fed into a fine-tuned 0.8-billion-parameter language model. On the SNLI dataset, our pipeline achieves 89.7% accuracy, just 1.9 points below an identically trained text-based model. On ANLI, it matches the published performance of RoBERTa-large on rounds R2 and R3 (48.0% vs. 48.9% and 44.9% vs. 44.4%) but trails by 16 points on R1, resulting in an overall gap of 9 to 14 points compared to its text counterpart. We term this gap the price of interpretability and demonstrate that it stems from representational limitations rather than data constraints. Ablation studies further reveal that graphs and text are complementary: combining both modalities achieves 92.1% accuracy on SNLI.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2026.akbc-1.17/
%P 234-246
Markdown (Informal)
[Can We Do Interpretable NLI with Graphs Based on Atomic Propositions?](https://aclanthology.org/2026.akbc-1.17/) (Boufouss et al., AKBC 2026)
ACL