{"paper":{"title":"Language Models Generalize to Human-like Word Order Preferences","license":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":[],"primary_cat":"cs.CL","authors_text":"Amanda Popadich, Shane Steinert-Threlkeld","submitted_at":"2026-08-05T16:33:46Z","abstract_excerpt":"A central question in language acquisition is whether linguistic biases can emerge from general learning mechanisms operating over underdetermined input. Artificial Language Learning (ALL) studies have shown that human learners reliably generalize beyond the evidence provided, including by preferring scope-homomorphic noun phrase modifier orders. In this work, we investigate whether language models exhibit the same bias under similar conditions. We create a controlled learning environment in which models are trained on a corpus where all noun phrases containing multiple modifiers have been rem"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2608.05028","kind":"arxiv","version":1},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2608.05028/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}