Prompting is now a dominant method for evaluating the linguistic knowledge of large language models (LLMs). While other methods directly read out models' probability distributions over strings, prompting requires models to access this internal information by processing linguistic input, thereby implicitly testing a new type of emergent ability: metalinguistic judgment. In this study, we compare metalinguistic prompting and direct probability measurements as ways of measuring models' linguistic knowledge. Broadly, we find that LLMs' metalinguistic judgments are inferior to quantities directly derived from representations. Furthermore, consistency gets worse as the prompt query diverges from direct measurements of next-word probabilities. Our findings suggest that negative results relying on metalinguistic prompts cannot be taken as conclusive evidence that an LLM lacks a particular linguistic generalization. Our results also highlight the value that is lost with the move to closed APIs where access to probability distributions is limited.

Prompting is not a substitute for probability measurements in large language models

Scalar inferences (SI) are a signature example of how humans interpret language based on unspoken alternatives. While empirical studies have demonstrated that human SI rates are highly variable -- both within instances of a single scale, and across different scales -- there have been few proposals that quantitatively explain both cross- and within-scale variation. Here, we test a shared mechanism explaining SI rates within and across scales: context-driven expectations about the unspoken alternatives. Using neural language models to approximate human predictive distributions, we test to what extent SIs are affected by (1) expectedness of the strong scalemate as an alternative, and (2) uncertainty about the underlying scale. We find that both predictors capture variation in SI rates, although the expectedness of the alternative robustly predicts cross-scale variation only under a meaning-based view of alternatives. Our results suggest that pragmatic inferences arise from context-driven expectations over alternatives, and these expectations are captured by neural language models.

Expectations over unspoken alternatives predict pragmatic inferences

Pragmatics and non-literal language understanding are essential to human communication, and present a long-standing challenge for artificial language models. We perform a fine-grained comparison of language models and humans on seven pragmatic phenomena, using zero-shot prompting on an expert-curated set of English materials. We ask whether models (1) select pragmatic interpretations of speaker utterances, (2) make similar error patterns as humans, and (3) use similar linguistic cues as humans to solve the tasks. We find that the largest models achieve high accuracy and match human error patterns: within incorrect responses, models favor literal interpretations over heuristic-based distractors. We also find preliminary evidence that models and humans are sensitive to similar linguistic cues. Our results suggest that pragmatic behaviors can emerge in models without explicitly constructed representations of mental states. However, models tend to struggle with phenomena relying on social expectation violations.

<iframe src="https://app.sli.do/event/8PaBoicsuHK7beXFunvrtr/embed/polls/b741b957-1695-47a1-b882-83593580cc60" width="300" height="400"></iframe>

A fine-grained comparison of pragmatic language understanding in humans and language models

Prior work has shown that structural supervision helps English language models learn generalizations about syntactic phenomena such as subject-verb agreement. However, it remains unclear if such an inductive bias would also improve language models’ ability to learn grammatical dependencies in typologically different languages. Here we investigate this question in Mandarin Chinese, which has a logographic, largely syllable-based writing system; different word order; and sparser morphology than English. We train LSTMs, Recurrent Neural Network Grammars, Transformer language models, and Transformer-parameterized generative parsing models on two Mandarin Chinese datasets of different sizes. We evaluate the models’ ability to learn different aspects of Mandarin grammar that assess syntactic and semantic relationships. We find suggestive evidence that structural supervision helps with representing syntactic state across intervening content and improves performance in low-data settings, suggesting that the benefits of hierarchical inductive biases in acquiring dependency relationships may extend beyond English.

Controlled Evaluation of Grammatical Knowledge in Mandarin Chinese Language Models

Iterated models of pragmatic reasoning, such as the Rational Speech Act model (RSA; Frank & Goodman, 2012), aim to explain how meaning is understood in context. We propose an optimal experiment design approach for teasing apart such models, in which contexts are optimized for differentiating model predictions in reference games. We use this approach to compare RSA with RD-RSA (Zaslavsky et al., 2020), a recent variant of RSA grounded in Rate-Distortion theory. First, we show that our optimal experiment design approach finds cases in which the two models yield qualitatively different predictions, in contrast to previous experimental settings for which these models generate similar predictions. Next, we test the models on newly collected experimental data using our optimal design. Our results show that in this experimental setting RD-RSA robustly outperforms the standard RSA model. This finding supports the idea that Rate-Distortion theory may characterize human pragmatic reasoning.

Empirical Support for a Rate-Distortion Account of Pragmatic Reasoning

Scalar implicatures, one of the signatures of pragmatic reasoning, are believed to arise from competing alternative utterances, which the listener knows that the speaker could have used to express a strengthened meaning. But do scalar implicatures also arise in the presence of nonce objects, for which no alternative name is known? We conduct a series of experiments assessing the degree of scalar strengthening driven by familiar and nonce objects. We find that nonce objects can derive scalar implicatures as strongly as familiar objects in simple reference games. Our experiments also reveal an asymmetry in the relative strengths of familiar- and nonce-driven inferences: relative to the prior, participants preferentially interpret the name of a shared feature as referring to an object with an additional nonce feature over an object with an additional familiar feature, suggesting that familiar alternatives exert greater scalar pressure than nonce alternatives. We also present exploratory model simulations suggesting that our results may be explained by rationally reasoning about a high-cost description of the novel object. Our findings support the idea that novel lexical entries may be generated from one-shot encounters and spontaneously used in pragmatic inference.

Competition from novel features drives scalar inferences in reference games

Theme Track: Large Language Models and the Future of NLP 1

technical paper

**Welcome to EMNLP 2023!**

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The conference program is packed with insightful presentations, thought-provoking workshops, and engaging networking opportunities. In addition to the technical sessions, we have also planned several social events that will provide you with the opportunity to connect with your colleagues.

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EMNLP 2023

EMNLP 2023 took place in Singapore from Dec 6th to Dec 10th, 2023.

Poster Session 4

poster

### Welcome to ACL 2023, the 61st Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics! 
<br>The conference will be held in Toronto, Canada, July 9-14, 2023.<br><br>
Following the succession of the recent conferences in our field, ACL 2023 will adopt a hybrid format.
While the impact of Covid has considerably diminished in terms of traveling, obtaining visas to Canada
entails a very long process. Moreover, the global economic conditions pose challenges for many individuals to travel to conferences. Recognizing these circumstances, we know many participants may not be
able to attend the conference in person. Therefore, we are committed to providing a great virtual platform
so everyone has the opportunity to interact with other participants and enjoy the conference. Based on the
current registered participants, approxiately 30% have chosen to attend the conference virtually. Whether
you join us in person or virtually, we sincerely hope everyone has a remarkable conference experience.<br>
This General Chair’s message is where I express my gratitude to the many individuals who have made
enormous contributions to the conference over the past year.

Read [**ACL 2023 General Chair's message**](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WobYM7norbG4dI48s75HfJoD89qgX5a_F-6U8AteLSA/edit?usp=sharing/) in full.

##### **[Conference Handbook](https://2023.aclweb.org/downloads/acl2023-handbook.pdf)**
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ACL 2023

The Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) is the premier international scientific and professional society for people working on computational problems involving human language, a field often referred to as either computational linguistics or natural language processing.

Poster Session 1

Virtual Poster Session II: Linguistic Theories, Cognitive Modeling and Psycholinguistics

EMNLP 2021 is planned to be a hybrid event in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, with both on-site and fully virtual participation possible. The experience for on-site participants would closely approximate a normal pre-COVID *ACL conference, with 5-6 thematically organized parallel sessions and live Q/A and interactive discussion immediately after the talks. Presentations by virtual participants will be equitably interleaved with those of on-site participants, projected on the auditorium screens as if on-site, and also followed immediately by live Q/A and interactive discussion at a time during reasonable waking hours for the virtual presenter. For all participants, on-site and virtual, who are unable to attend a session due to either time-zone issues or because they are participating in another session live, talk recordings and slides will be available online at a minimum after the live presentation (and in many cases before as well), and questions may be submitted in advance on session-specific discussion boards and answered live in session with the usual visual aids if desired.

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EMNLP 2021

EMNLP 2021 is planned to be a hybrid event in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, with both on-site and fully virtual participation possible.


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Poster Session 1 -  C : Cognitive Science

### Looking for Cogsci 2023? Please [click here](https://underline.io/events/405/reception) to switch to 2023 edition.


**Dear Colleagues,**

Welcome to the 43rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society! 

This year’s conference brings together the latest research from all Cognitive Science and also highlights this year’s theme **Comparative Cognition: Animal Minds.** 

The program features four plenary speakers: Friederike Range (University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna), Onur Güntürkün (Ruhr University Bochum), Julia Fischer (University of Göttingen), and Erich Jarvis (The Rockefeller University). The keynotes and invited symposia showcase the broad spectrum of ideas that encompass the conference theme of comparative cognition. 

Further, the program includes the Rumelhart Prize keynote presentation by Susan Goldin-Meadow (University of Chicago), and symposia to celebrate the winner of the Elman Prize: Wei Ji Ma (New York University), the Heineken Award winner Robert Zatorre (McGill University), and the Robert J. Glushko Dissertation Prizes session.

The program committee for CogSci 2021 received 1,025 submissions, including 710 full papers, 275 member abstracts, 8 publication-based talks, as well as 15 proposals for symposia, and 17 for workshops and tutorials. After a rigorous review process, the committee selected 152 papers for oral presentation and inclusion in the conference proceedings (14.8%), 332 papers for poster presentation and inclusion in the proceedings (32.4%), and 175 papers for poster presentation with inclusion of abstracts in the proceedings (17.1%) We also selected 275 submitted member abstracts. In addition, we accepted 6 publication-based talks, 12 symposia, and 9 workshops and tutorials to make for an exciting and inclusive program.

We hope that you enjoy the conference this year!<br><br>

**Your Program Chairs,**
![](https://assets.underline.io/uploads/markdown_image/1/image/99984908caba5e6453e5fc5ba34f3507.jpg)

**Learn more about the Vienna Cognitive Science Hub at the University of Vienna, hosts of CogSci 2021**

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/464h1m3iU68" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

To review the proceedings for the conference or review the searchable program, please visit the [website](https://cognitivesciencesociety.org/program/).


CogSci 2021

The Cognitive Science Society brings together researchers from around the world who hold a common goal: understanding the nature of the human mind. The mission of the Society is to promote Cognitive Science as a discipline, and to foster scientific interchange among researchers in various areas of study, including Artificial Intelligence, Linguistics, Anthropology, Psychology, Neuroscience, Philosophy, and Education. The Society is a non-profit professional organization and its activities include sponsoring an annual conference and publishing the journals Cognitive Science and TopiCS.

Jennifer Hu

6

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SHORT BIO

Presentations

Prompting is not a substitute for probability measurements in large language models

Expectations over unspoken alternatives predict pragmatic inferences

A fine-grained comparison of pragmatic language understanding in humans and language models

Controlled Evaluation of Grammatical Knowledge in Mandarin Chinese Language Models

Empirical Support for a Rate-Distortion Account of Pragmatic Reasoning

Competition from novel features drives scalar inferences in reference games

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