Modality Matching Matters: Calibrating Language Distances for Cross-Lingual Transfer in URIEL+
The result's identifiers
Result code in IS VaVaI
<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F00216208%3A11320%2F26%3AJCICN3XT" target="_blank" >RIV/00216208:11320/26:JCICN3XT - isvavai.cz</a>
Result on the web
<a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/2510.19217" target="_blank" >http://arxiv.org/abs/2510.19217</a>
DOI - Digital Object Identifier
<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2510.19217" target="_blank" >10.48550/arXiv.2510.19217</a>
Alternative languages
Result language
angličtina
Original language name
Modality Matching Matters: Calibrating Language Distances for Cross-Lingual Transfer in URIEL+
Original language description
Existing linguistic knowledge bases such as URIEL+ provide valuable geographic, genetic and typological distances for cross-lingual transfer but suffer from two key limitations. One, their one-size-fits-all vector representations are ill-suited to the diverse structures of linguistic data, and two, they lack a principled method for aggregating these signals into a single, comprehensive score. In this paper, we address these gaps by introducing a framework for type-matched language distances. We propose novel, structure-aware representations for each distance type: speaker-weighted distributions for geography, hyperbolic embeddings for genealogy, and a latent variables model for typology. We unify these signals into a robust, task-agnostic composite distance. In selecting transfer languages, our representations and composite distances consistently improve performance across a wide range of NLP tasks, providing a more principled and effective toolkit for multilingual research.
Czech name
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Czech description
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Classification
Type
O - Miscellaneous
CEP classification
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OECD FORD branch
10201 - Computer sciences, information science, bioinformathics (hardware development to be 2.2, social aspect to be 5.8)
Result continuities
Project
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Continuities
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Others
Publication year
2025
Confidentiality
S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů