The Frequency Confound in Language-Model Surprisal and Metaphor Novelty

In three linesAn arXiv study examines the relationship between language-model surprisal and metaphor novelty. Across 8 Pythia model sizes and 154 checkpoints, lexical frequency predicts metaphor novelty better than surprisal. The surprisal-novelty association peaks at early training stages then declines, mirroring the surprisal-frequency association timing.

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