Context effects on the interpretation of complement coercion : a comparative study with language models in Norwegian

Abstract

In complement coercion sentences, like *John began the book*, a covert event (e.g., reading) may be recovered based on lexical meanings, world knowledge, and context. We investigate how context influences coercion interpretation performance for 17 language models (LMs) in Norwegian, a low-resource language. Our new dataset contained isolated coercion sentences (context-neutral), plus the same sentences with a subject NP that suggests a particular covert event and sentences that have a similar effect but that precede or follow the coercion sentence. LMs generally benefit from contextual enrichment, but performance varies depending on the model. Models that struggled in context-neutral sentences showed greater improvements from contextual enrichment. Subject NPs and pre-coercion sentences had the largest effect in facilitating coercion interpretation.