arXiv:2606.00230cs.LG2026-06

发现大模型预训练中存在延迟语法泛化现象,揭示了概念表征的动态演化过程。

A Pre-Training Analogue of Grokking in Language Models: Tracing Delayed Grammatical Generalization

论文配图:A Pre-Training Analogue of Grokking in Language Models: Tracing Delayed Grammatical Generalization
图 1 · 摘自论文原文
  • 构建基于暴露度的框架,模拟预训练中的泛化行为
  • 5类语法现象均出现延迟泛化,关键短语触发后才生效
  • 注意力集中在少数头,语法向量维度提升且更可预测

Grokking 是神经网络在完成训练数据拟合后仍长时间实现泛化的现象,此前多在监督学习设置下研究。而大模型预训练采用无标签语料的下一个词预测,数据重复有限且无显式训练/验证划分。为此,我们提出一种基于暴露度的框架,以研究预训练中的类 grokking 动态。评估基于 BLiMP 最小对,提供受控的语法对比。针对每个最小对,我们识别出关键短语——最小连续片段,既包含语法差异也包含相关语境。若关键短语出现在预训练窗口内,则归入代理训练集;其余归入代理验证集。在五种语法现象中均观察到延迟泛化。分析泛化前后预训练检查点发现,语法概念向量对语法可接受性的预测能力增强,并占据更高维子空间。此外,关键词到相关上下文词的注意力集中于少数注意力头。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Grokking, the phenomenon in which neural networks generalize long after fitting their training data, has been studied in supervised settings on many epochs. LLM pre-training instead involves next-token prediction over an unlabeled corpus, with limited data repetition and no explicit train/validation split. To address this, we propose an exposure-based framework that enables the study of grokking-like dynamics during LLM pre-training. We ground our evaluation in BLiMP minimal pairs, which provide controlled grammatical contrasts. For every BLiMP minimal pair, we identify a critical phrase, the smallest continuous span that captures the grammatical contrast and the phenomenon-relevant context. Examples whose critical phrase appears in the pre-training window are assigned to the proxy-train split; the remaining examples are assigned to the proxy-validation split. Across five grammatical phenomena, we observe delayed generalization. Analyzing pre-training checkpoints before and after generalization shows that grammatical concept vectors become more predictive of grammatical acceptability and occupy a higher-dimensional subspace after generalization. We also find that attention from the critical token to the relevant context token is concentrated in a small number of heads.

大模型语法泛化注意力机制预训练

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