Pseudowords as probes: Large Language Models show little of the sublexical sensitivity that governs human pseudoword processing

Excerpt

arXiv:2610.07936v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Systematicity, the probabilistic mapping of form to meaning, permeates language at all levels, and sublexical cues have been shown to govern human pseudoword processing. Yet whether LLMs exhibit comparable sensitivity to these cues remains unclear. We tested five LLMs on two Italian two-alternative forced-choice pseudoword experiments and compared their responses with a human behavioural baseline. LLMs aligned more reliably with humans when real-wo