United States

The frontier of large language model (LLM) development has largely been substantiated by knowledge-intensive tasks specified in English. In this proposed thesis, I argue for the key role that multilinguality occupies in the development of practical and knowledgeable LLMs. Importantly, I show that informed use of multilinguality enhances LLMs&#39; capabilities, and our understanding thereof.


First, I consider practical methods to improve LLM&#39;s performance on standard natural language processing (NLP) tasks by leveraging their existing multilingual knowledge. Then, I investigate the underlying multilingual knowledge of LLMs with two benchmarks: on complex reasoning, and on territorial disputes. These benchmarks reveal LLMs&#39; inconsistent performance across languages. I then design efficient techniques, both at inference-time and training-time, to address these discrepancies. I close with a proposed work extending the geopolitical benchmark to the retrieved augmented generation scenario.

NAACL 2025

Towards Practical and Knowledgeable Large Language Models for a Multilingual World

multilinguality

computational social science

reasoning

The 15th Joint MMM-INTERMAG Conference (2022 Joint) is sponsored jointly by AIP Publishing and the IEEE Magnetics Society. Members of the international scientific and engineering communities interested in recent developments in fundamental and applied magnetism are invited to attend and contribute to the technical sessions. The technical program will include invited and contributed papers in oral and poster sessions, invited symposia, a plenary session, and an evening session, with about 1500 presentations overall. This Conference provides an outstanding opportunity for worldwide participants to meet their colleagues and collaborators and discuss developments in all areas of magnetism research.

The 2022 Joint Conference will offer both in-person and prerecorded on-demand content.

For tickets to the event, please register at the following link: https://magnetism.org/register

Please register for the Joint MMM-Intermag conference to join the event.

2022 Joint MMM-INTERMAG

This Conference provides an outstanding opportunity for worldwide participants to meet their colleagues and collaborators and discuss developments in all areas of magnetism research.

The frontier of large language model (LLM) development has largely been substantiated by knowledge-intensive tasks specified in English. In this proposed thesis, I argue for the key role that multilinguality occupies in the development of practical and knowledgeable LLMs. Importantly, I show that informed use of multilinguality enhances LLMs' capabilities, and our understanding thereof.


First, I consider practical methods to improve LLM's performance on standard natural language processing (NLP) tasks by leveraging their existing multilingual knowledge. Then, I investigate the underlying multilingual knowledge of LLMs with two benchmarks: on complex reasoning, and on territorial disputes. These benchmarks reveal LLMs' inconsistent performance across languages. I then design efficient techniques, both at inference-time and training-time, to address these discrepancies. I close with a proposed work extending the geopolitical benchmark to the retrieved augmented generation scenario.

poster

### Welcome to 2025 Annual Conference of the Nations of the Americas Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics

Welcome to the 2025 meeting of the Nations of the Americas Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics! I am proud to help organize the first NAACL conference to carry the new name of our organization, one that emphasizes inclusion for all of the Americas. I am also pleased to welcome you to Albuquerque, New Mexico, a state whose unique blend of cultural influences will make for an excellent backdrop for NAACL 2025, especially with this year’s special theme on NLP in a Multicultural World. 
**[Continue reading...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jX-qGhqVSZZCIrAnJaz798pflu5Irrdn/view?usp=sharing)**

*- Colin Cherry, Google, NAACL 2025 General Chair* 

[![](https://assets.underline.io/markdown_image/1/image/b087f8a4dc5816d6e1a6514e59c59ac3.png)](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1T96GzPqObXrMln2BMByCSXTSizjTg69P/view?usp=sharing)

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Welcome to 2025 Annual Conference of the Nations of the Americas Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics

How does textual representation of audio relate to the Large Language Model's (LLMs) learning about the audio world? This research investigates the extent to which LLMs can be prompted to generate audio, despite their primary training in textual data. We employ a three-tier approach, progressively increasing the complexity of audio generation: 1) Musical Notes, 2) Environmental Sounds, and 3) Human Speech. To bridge the gap between text and audio, we leverage code as an intermediary, prompting LLMs to generate code that, when executed, produces the desired audio output. To evaluate the quality and accuracy of the generated audio, we employ FAD and CLAP scores. Our findings reveal that while LLMs can generate basic audio features, their performance deteriorates as the complexity of the audio increases. This suggests that while LLMs possess a latent understanding of the auditory world, their ability to translate this understanding into tangible audio output remains rudimentary. Further research into techniques that can enhance the quality and diversity of LLM-generated audio can lead to an improvement in the performance of text-based LLMs in generating audio.

Probing Audio-Generation Capabilities of Text-Based Language Models

The ways in which natural language processing (NLP) can inform how veterans can improve effectiveness in translating military experience to workforce utility is underexplored. We design NLP experiments to evaluate the degree of explanation in veteran job interview responses as a proxy for perceived hireability. We examine linguistic and psycholinguistic features, context, and participant variability to investigate the mechanics of effective communication in employee selection. Results yield good performance when distinguishing between varying degrees of explanation in responses using LIWC features, indicating robustness of linguistic feature integration. Classifying Over- and Under-explained responses reflects challenges of class imbalance and the limitations of tested NLP methods for detecting subtleties in overly verbose or concise communication. Our findings have immediate applications for assistive technologies in job interview settings, and broader implications for enhancing automated communication assessment tools and refining strategies for training and interventions in communication-heavy fields.

Linguistic Analysis of Veteran Job Interviews to Assess Effectiveness in Translating Military Expertise to the Civilian Workforce

This paper introduces a new dataset for classifying memes by their template and communicative intent. It includes a broad selection of meme templates and examples scraped from imgflip and a smaller hand-annotated set of memes scraped from Reddit. The Reddit memes have been annotated for meta-category
using a novel annotation scheme that classifies memes by the structure of the perspective they are being used to communicate. YOLOv11 and ChatGPT 4o are used to provide baseline modeling results. We find that YOLO struggles with template classification on real-world data but outperforms ChatGPT in classifying meta-categories.

MetaMeme: A Dataset for Meme Template and Meta-Category Classification

Content moderation is essential in preventing the spread of harmful content on the Internet. However, there are instances where moderation fails and it is important to understand when and why that happens. Workflows that aim to uncover a system's weakness typically use clustering of the data points' embeddings to group errors together. In this paper, we evaluate the K-Means clustering of four text representations for the task of offensive language detection in English and Levantine Arabic. We find Sentence-BERT (S-BERT) embeddings give the most human-interpretable clustering for English errors and the grouping is mainly based on the targeted group in the text. Meanwhile, S-BERT embeddings of Large Language Model (LLM)-generated linguistic features give the most interpretable clustering for Arabic errors.

Representing and Clustering Errors in Offensive Language Detection

Cutting-edge LLMs have emerged as powerful tools for multilingual communication and understanding. However, LLMs perform worse in Common Sense Reasoning (CSR) tasks when prompted in low-resource languages (LRLs) like Hindi or Swahili compared to high-resource languages (HRLs) like English. Equalizing this inconsistent access to quality LLM outputs is crucial to ensure fairness for speakers of LRLs and across diverse linguistic communities. In this paper, we propose an approach to bridge this gap in LLM performance. Our approach involves fine-tuning an LLM on synthetic code-switched text generated using controlled language-mixing methods. We empirically demonstrate that fine-tuning LLMs on synthetic code-switched datasets leads to substantial improvements in LRL model performance while preserving or enhancing performance in HRLs. Additionally, we present a new dataset of synthetic code-switched text derived from the CommonSenseQA dataset, featuring three distinct language ratio configurations.

Breaking Language Barriers: Equitable Performance in Multilingual Language Models

The rapid spread of misinformation on social media presents a significant challenge for public discourse and decision-making. Identifying and categorizing factual claims from social media platforms is essential to understand the online discourse and combat the influence of misleading information. This thesis proposal introduces a novel framework for the automated construction of taxonomy of factual claims on social media. The framework leverages large language models (LLMs) and human-in-the-loop annotations to accurately identify distinct factual claims and organize them into a multi-tiered taxonomy. It provides an organized way to manage and explore factual claims, making the analysis of online discourse more efficient and insightful.

Structured Understanding of Social Media Discourse: An Automated Framework for Taxonomy Construction

Non-factoid question-answering (NFQA) poses a significant challenge due to its open-ended nature, diverse intents, and the need for multi-aspect reasoning, which renders conventional factoid QA approaches, including retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), inadequate. Unlike factoid questions, non-factoid questions (NFQs) lack definitive answers and require synthesizing information from multiple sources across various reasoning dimensions. To address these limitations, we introduce Typed-RAG, a type-aware multi-aspect decomposition framework within the RAG paradigm for NFQA. Typed-RAG classifies NFQs into distinct types—such as debate, experience, and comparison—and applies aspect-based decomposition to refine retrieval and generation strategies. By decomposing multi-aspect NFQs into single-aspect sub-queries and aggregating the results, Typed-RAG generates more informative and contextually relevant responses. To evaluate Typed-RAG, we introduce Wiki-NFQA, a benchmark dataset covering diverse NFQ types. Experimental results demonstrate that Typed-RAG outperforms baselines, thereby highlighting the importance of type-aware decomposition for effective retrieval and generation in NFQA.

Typed-RAG: Type-aware Multi-Aspect Decomposition for Non-Factoid Question Answering

Crosswalks, which map one classification system to another, are critical tools for harmonizing data across time, countries, or frameworks. However, constructing crosswalks is labor-intensive and often requires domain expertise. This paper investigates the potential of Large Language Models (LLMs) to assist in creating crosswalks, focusing on two Danish occupational classification systems from different time periods as a case study. We propose a two-stage, prompt-based framework for this task, where LLMs perform similarity assessments between classification codes and identify final mappings through a guided decision process. Using four instruction-tuned LLMs and comparing them against an embedding-based baseline, we evaluate the performance of different models in crosswalks. Our results highlight the strengths of LLMs in crosswalk creation compared to the embedding-based baseline, showing the effectiveness of the interactive prompt-based framework for conducting crosswalks by LLMs. Furthermore, we analyze the impact of model combinations across two interactive rounds, highlighting the importance of model selection and consistency. This work contributes to the growing field of NLP applications for domain-specific knowledge mapping and demonstrates the potential of LLMs in advancing crosswalk methodologies.

Can Large Language Models Advance Crosswalks? The Case of Danish Occupation Codes

Defectivity such as morphological gaps represents an intriguing and underexplored phenomenon in the study of language. Addressing defectivity, where expected inflectional forms are absent, is essential for improving the accuracy of NLP tools in morphologically rich languages. However, traditional linguistic resources often lack coverage of morphological gaps as such knowledge requires significant human expertise and effort to document and verify. For scarce linguistic phenomena in under-explored languages, Wikipedia and Wiktionary often serve as among the few accessible resources. Despite their extensive reach, their reliability has been a subject of controversy. This study customizes a novel neural morphological analyzer to annotate Latin and Italian corpora. Using the massive annotated data, crowd-sourced lists of defective verbs compiled from Wiktionary are validated computationally to assess their reliability. Our results show that while Wiktionary provides a reliable account of Italian morphological gaps, at least 7% of Latin lemmata listed as defective are unlikely to be truly defective. This discrepancy highlights potential limitations of crowd-sourced wikis as definitive sources of linguistic knowledge, particularly for less-studied phenomena and languages, despite their value as resources for rare linguistic features. By providing scalable tools and methods for quality assurance of crowd-sourced data, this work advances computational morphology and expands linguistic knowledge of morphological gaps in non-English, morphologically rich languages.

Mind the Gap: Computational Validation of Crowd-Sourced Linguistic Knowledge on Morphological Gaps of Two Related Languages

To improve the performance of sentence pair modeling tasks, we propose an additional pre-training method, also known as transfer fine-tuning, for pre-trained masked language models.
Pre-training for masked language modeling is not necessarily designed to bring semantically similar sentences closer together in the embedding space.
Our proposed method aims to improve the performance of sentence pair modeling by applying contrastive learning to pre-trained masked language models, in which sentence embeddings of paraphrase pairs are made similar to each other.
While natural language inference corpora, which are standard in previous studies on contrastive learning, are not available on a large-scale for non-English languages, our method can construct a training corpus for contrastive learning from a raw corpus and a paraphrase dictionary at a low cost.
Experimental results on four sentence pair modeling tasks revealed the effectiveness of our method in both English and Japanese.

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