New Evaluation Paradigm for Lexical Simplification

Abstract: Lexical Simplification (LS) methods use a three-step pipeline: complex word identification, substitute generation, and substitute ranking, each with separate evaluation datasets. We found LLMs can simplify sentences directly with a single prompt, bypassing the traditional pipeline. However, existing LS datasets are not suitable for evaluating these LLM-generated simplified sentences, as they focus on providing substitutes for single complex words without identifying all complex words in a sentence. To address this gap, we propose a new annotation method for constructing an all-in-one LS dataset through human-machine collaboration. Automated methods generate a pool of potential substitutes, which human annotators then assess, suggesting additional alternatives as needed. Additionally, we explore LLM-based methods with single prompts, in-context learning, and chain-of-thought techniques. We introduce a multi-LLMs collaboration approach to simulate each step of the LS task. Experimental results demonstrate that LS based on multi-LLMs approaches significantly outperforms existing baselines.