Contextual trajectory and incremental contextual displacement: Towards using LLMs to understand dynamic, utterance-specific meaning construction
Transformer-based large language models (LLMs) such as RoBERTa represent text using contextual word embeddings (CWEs), which alter the embeddings associated with each token based on surrounding context. We construct token-wise incremental trajectories by repeatedly recomputing a token's CWE as successive words are added to a sentence, yielding a representation of how contextualized embeddings evolve as the utterance unfolds. We evaluate this approach using garden-path sentences as a test case with characteristic features. Token-wise trajectories reproduce known features of garden-path processing, including disruption around the critical region, and reliably distinguish garden-path sentenc...
| Authors | Grayson Wycliffe Storer, Julia Witte Zimmerman |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.CL |
| Published | 30 September 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 30 September 2026 |
Silytics shows public metadata from arXiv and links to the original. Information may be incomplete or out of date. Last refreshed 17 October 2026. Licenses and terms of the original apply to the work itself. Not financial, legal or professional advice.