Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: Focus particles such as "even" and "only" are central to formal semantic theories that posit structured representations over sets of alternatives. "Even" highlights unexpected or extreme alternatives, while "only" enforces exclusivity. If such scalar representations are robust and generalizable, they should give rise to consistent judgments across contexts and systems. In this work, we test whether humans and large language models (LLMs) construct stable scalar representations from sentences containing these particles. Using a dataset of approximately 100 items, participants and models were asked to make scalar judgments. Preliminary results suggest that similar outputs across humans and LLMs may arise from different underlying mechanisms.
Source: arXiv (Cornell University)
Authors: Brousse, Catherine M., Radpour, Nelu D.
Institution: Florida State University
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7202192574
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