Probing Semantic Alignment, Lexical Invariance, and Syntactic Influence in LLM Metaphor Processing (2026.acl-long)
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| Challenge: | Large language models (LLMs) achieve strong performance on metaphor detection and interpretation tasks, yet it remains unclear what such success actually reveals about metaphor processing. |
| Approach: | They propose to probing semantic attribute alignment, lexical invariance, and syntactic sensitivity to examine the limits of behavioral evidence for metaphor processing. |
| Outcome: | The proposed model can exhibit semantic drift relative to reference attributes, stable lexical anchors persist across contextual conditions, potentially supporting conventional metaphors while biasing novel metaphors requiring contextual integration. |
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