arXiv:2601.09446cs.CLcs.AI2026-01

让小模型更准确地把自然语言转成逻辑公式,提升推理可靠性。

Improving Symbolic Translation of Language Models for Logical Reasoning

  • 分两阶段生成:先提谓词再转逻辑式,更好控制输出质量。
  • 在4个数据集上降低错误率,提升谓词覆盖率,小模型表现接近大模型。
  • 适合想用小模型做可靠逻辑推理的研究者或应用开发者。

使用形式语言进行演绎推理与语言模型(LMs)高度契合,将自然语言(NL)翻译为一阶逻辑(FOL)并结合外部求解器可构建可验证的可靠推理系统。然而,小型语言模型常在此翻译任务中表现不佳,因格式和翻译错误导致符号输出不正确。现有方法多依赖自迭代纠错,但效果严重依赖底层模型能力。为此,我们首先分类常见错误,并利用大模型合成数据对小型模型进行微调。评估基于定义的错误类别进行。引入增量推理机制,将推理分为谓词生成与FOL翻译两个阶段,增强对模型行为的控制,提升生成质量(以谓词指标衡量)。该分解框架还支持引入针对谓词元数错误的验证模块,进一步优化性能。研究在三个模型族上跨四个逻辑推理数据集进行评估,综合微调、增量推理与验证模块显著降低错误率,提高谓词覆盖率,改善小型模型的推理表现,推动构建可靠且可访问的符号推理系统。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

The use of formal language for deductive logical reasoning aligns well with language models (LMs), where translating natural language (NL) into first-order logic (FOL) and employing an external solver results in a verifiable and therefore reliable reasoning system. However, smaller LMs often struggle with this translation task, frequently producing incorrect symbolic outputs due to formatting and translation errors. Existing approaches typically rely on self-iteration to correct these errors, but such methods depend heavily on the capabilities of the underlying model. To address this, we first categorize common errors and fine-tune smaller LMs using data synthesized by large language models. The evaluation is performed using the defined error categories. We introduce incremental inference, which divides inference into two stages, predicate generation and FOL translation, providing greater control over model behavior and enhancing generation quality as measured by predicate metrics. This decomposition framework also enables the use of a verification module that targets predicate-arity errors to further improve performance. Our study evaluates three families of models across four logical-reasoning datasets. The comprehensive fine-tuning, incremental inference, and verification modules reduce error rates, increase predicate coverage, and improve reasoning performance for smaller LMs, moving us closer to developing reliable and accessible symbolic-reasoning systems.

逻辑推理小模型符号系统语言模型

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