Papers by Bernd Möbius
Attention on Multiword Expressions: A Multilingual Study of BERT-based Models with Regard to Idiomaticity and Microsyntax (2025.findings-naacl)
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| Challenge: | Specifically, models fine-tuned on semantic tasks tend to distribute attention to idiomatic expressions more evenly across layers. |
| Approach: | They analyze attention patterns of encoder-only models towards two distinct types of Multiword Expressions (MWEs) idioms present challenges in semantic non-compositionality, while MSUs demonstrate unconventional syntactic behavior that does not conform to standard grammatical categorizations. |
| Outcome: | The proposed models show that fine-tuned models allocate attention to idiomatic expressions more evenly across layers. |
It’s Not a Walk in the Park! Challenges of Idiom Translation in Speech-to-text Systems (2025.acl-long)
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| Challenge: | idioms are defined as words with a figurative meaning not deducible from their individual components. |
| Approach: | They compare idiom translation as compared to conventional news translation in two languages . they compare MT and SLT systems with MT, Large Language Models and cascaded alternatives . |
| Outcome: | The proposed systems show better handling of idioms than standard news translation systems. |
Modeling the Impact of Syntactic Distance and Surprisal on Cross-Slavic Text Comprehension (2022.lrec-1)
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| Challenge: | Using symmetric measures of insertion, deletion and movement of syntactic units, we investigate phonetic and orthographic asymmetries between selected languages. |
| Approach: | They focus on the syntactic variation and measure syntaktic distances between nine Slavic languages using symmetric measures of insertion, deletion and movement of syntak units in parallel sentences of the fable “The North Wind and the Sun”. |
| Outcome: | The proposed measures are validated on spoken and written cloze tests for Slavic native speakers to determine whether variations in syntax lead to slower or impeded intercomprehension of Slav texts. |