mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

How Conservative are Language Models? Adapting to the Introduction of Gender-Neutral Pronouns

arXiv 2204.10281 ↗First posted 11 Apr 2022cs.CLcited by 16

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Abstract (arXiv)

Gender-neutral pronouns have recently been introduced in many languages to a) include non-binary people and b) as a generic singular. Recent results from psycholinguistics suggest that gender-neutral pronouns (in Swedish) are not associated with human processing difficulties. This, we show, is in sharp contrast with automated processing. We show that gender-neutral pronouns in Danish, English, and Swedish are associated with higher perplexity, more dispersed attention patterns, and worse downstream performance. We argue that such conservativity in language models may limit widespread adoption of gender-neutral pronouns and must therefore be resolved.

Key facts. Cited by 16 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 19 of its 45 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 11 Apr 2022.

Builds on

19 of 45 references.

References · 19

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7 more
  1. 2021A Survey on Gender Bias in Natural Language Processingcited by 89
  2. 2019Toward Gender-Inclusive Coreference Resolutioncited by 84
  3. 2019What Kind of Language Is Hard to Language-Model?cited by 50
  4. 2022Welcome to the Modern World of Pronouns: Identity-Inclusive Natural Language Processing beyond Gendercited by 47
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Citing papers per year: 2022: 1; 2023: 8; 2024: 6; 2025: 1.

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  1. 2023Language Model Behavior: A Comprehensive Surveycited by 92
  2. 2023MISGENDERED: Limits of Large Language Models in Understanding Pronounscited by 43
  3. 2023Stereotypes and Smut: The (Mis)representation of Non-cisgender Identities by Text-to-Image Modelscited by 26
  4. 2023Hi Guys or Hi Folks? Benchmarking Gender-Neutral Machine Translation with the GeNTE Corpuscited by 20
  5. 2023What about em? How Commercial Machine Translation Fails to Handle (Neo-)Pronounscited by 19
  6. 2022Better Hit the Nail on the Head than Beat around the Bush: Removing Protected Attributes with a Single Projectioncited by 17
  7. 2024A Prompt Response to the Demand for Automatic Gender-Neutral Translationcited by 12
  8. 2024Enhancing Gender-Inclusive Machine Translation with Neomorphemes and Large Language Modelscited by 7
  9. 2023Evaluating Bias and Fairness in Gender-Neutral Pretrained Vision-and-Language Modelscited by 6
  10. 2023Test Suites Task: Evaluation of Gender Fairness in MT with MuST-SHE and INEScited by 6
  11. 2024MisgenderMender: A Community-Informed Approach to Interventions for Misgenderingcited by 6
  12. 2024Do language models practice what they preach? Examining language ideologies about gendered language reform encoded in LLMscited by 5
4 more
  1. 2024The Lou Dataset -- Exploring the Impact of Gender-Fair Language in German Text Classificationcited by 5
  2. 2024Transforming Dutch: Debiasing Dutch Coreference Resolution Systems for Non-binary Pronounscited by 2
  3. 2025Analyzing values about gendered language reform in LLMs' revisionscited by 1
  4. 2023PronounFlow: A Hybrid Approach for Calibrating Pronouns in Sentencescited by 0