Investigating the interaction of linguistic and mathematical reasoning in language models using multilingual number puzzles (2506.13886v1)

Abstract: Across languages, numeral systems vary widely in how they construct and combine numbers. While humans consistently learn to navigate this diversity, LLMs struggle with linguistic-mathematical puzzles involving cross-linguistic numeral systems, which humans can learn to solve successfully. We investigate why this task is difficult for LLMs through a series of experiments that untangle the linguistic and mathematical aspects of numbers in language. Our experiments establish that models cannot consistently solve such problems unless the mathematical operations in the problems are explicitly marked using known symbols ($+$, $\times$, etc, as in "twenty + three"). In further ablation studies, we probe how individual parameters of numeral construction and combination affect performance. While humans use their linguistic understanding of numbers to make inferences about the implicit compositional structure of numerals, LLMs seem to lack this notion of implicit numeral structure. We conclude that the ability to flexibly infer compositional rules from implicit patterns in human-scale data remains an open challenge for current reasoning models.

• The paper demonstrates that clarifying linguistic operators as explicit symbols significantly boosts model performance in solving multilingual number puzzles.
• The experiments reveal that language models excel when provided with explicit numerical cues but struggle with implicit numeral constructs.
• The findings suggest that integrating explicit reasoning guidance into training can enhance LLMs’ comprehension of complex numeral systems.

Interaction of Linguistic and Mathematical Reasoning in LLMs

The paper "Investigating the interaction of linguistic and mathematical reasoning in LLMs using multilingual number puzzles" explores the challenges faced by LLMs in solving linguistic-mathematical puzzles, particularly those involving diverse numeral systems across languages. The authors, Antara Raaghavi Bhattacharya et al., delve into the reasons why LLMs struggle with tasks that humans generally solve with ease, focusing on the implicit compositional structures inherent in numeral systems and the models' inability to infer them without explicit guidance.

Overview of Research

The paper involved experiments designed to analyze how LLMs tackle puzzles derived from multilingual numeral systems. These systems often incorporate operations such as addition, subtraction, and multiplication, which are not explicitly coded but are implied through linguistic constructs. For example, the numeral "vingt-neuf" in French implies "20 + 9" in the Hindu-Arabic numeral system, leading to the number 29. The research pinpoints that, unlike humans who are adept at navigating these implicit operations, LLMs falter unless these operations are explicitly represented using familiar symbols.

Experimental Findings

The experiments incorporated sets of linguistic puzzles with varying explicitness of mathematical operators:

1. Explicit Operators Experiment: The researchers modified puzzles to include explicit operators using familiar symbols (+, ×, etc.), unfamiliar symbols, or randomly selected words to symbolize operations. It was found that making operators explicit, particularly with familiar symbols, significantly improved model performance.
2. Contextual Information Modulation: The paper extended the puzzles by providing contextual hints like the language of origin, numeral base, and implicit operations explanation. Contextual information proved beneficial only for puzzles with implicit operators and seemed to confound models when mathematical settings suggested overt reasoning tasks.
3. Minimal-Pair Problems (Ablation Study): To isolate the effect of individual constructs, the researchers created minimal pairs of synthetic numeral system problems differing only in one parameter. Parameters such as numeral base, order, and operations were tested. Results demonstrated that advanced models handled numeral basing and ordering well but failed in comprehending implicit numerical structure unless aided by explicit operator context.

These results highlight a key limitation in LLMs—the difficulty of inferring implicit compositional structures from language-centered data without explicit guidance, a feature of human reasoning that models have yet to emulate.

Implications and Future Directions

This research underscores the current limitation of LLMs in flexibly adapting linguistic knowledge to solve problems that blend linguistic and mathematical reasoning. The implications are crucial for fields such as computational linguistics, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence, suggesting a need for better integration strategies within models to enhance reasoning capabilities. Furthermore, this paper opens discussions on enhancing model training by embedding reasoning components that mirror human-like comprehension and manipulation of numeral systems across diverse linguistic contexts.

Potential future research could focus on whether training LLMs specifically on datasets enriched with implicit and explicit numeral constructs might increase their problem-solving efficacy. Investigating the transparency in model architecture through circuit analysis could uncover modular structures that separately process linguistic and mathematical reasoning, thereby improving models' adaptability and inference capability.

In closing, while current LLMs exhibit significant proficiency in specific mathematical tasks, challenges remain in more abstract domains, in which human solvers seamlessly integrate distinct cognitive skills. Overcoming these challenges will likely require a concerted effort to develop technologies that emulate these aspects of human intelligence more closely.