Probing Minimalist Phase Structure in LLMs: What Universal Dependencies Cannot Represent

arXiv:2605.26431v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Structural probes train on Universal Dependencies (UD), which does not encode formal-syntactic abstractions such as phase boundaries or phase-internal cohesion. Whether large language models (LLMs) encode these remains an open question that UD-based probing cannot answer by construction. We evaluate structural probes on wh-movement stimuli where UD distances are invariant across conditions by design -- any non-zero effect therefore reflects structure beyond UD. The three conditions -- bare small clause, infinitival, and finite -- are ordered by t

Source: arXiv cs.CL — read the full report at the original publisher.

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