mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Large Language Models Can Learn Temporal Reasoning

arXiv 2401.06853 ↗First posted 12 Jan 2024cs.CLcited by 110

On the map: LLM reasoning → Knowledge- and tool-augmented reasoning

Abstract (arXiv)

While large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable reasoning capabilities, they are not without their flaws and inaccuracies. Recent studies have introduced various methods to mitigate these limitations. Temporal reasoning (TR), in particular, presents a significant challenge for LLMs due to its reliance on diverse temporal concepts and intricate temporal logic. In this paper, we propose TG-LLM, a novel framework towards language-based TR. Instead of reasoning over the original context, we adopt a latent representation, temporal graph (TG) that enhances the learning of TR. A synthetic dataset (TGQA), which is fully controllable and requires minimal supervision, is constructed for fine-tuning LLMs on this text-to-TG translation task. We confirmed in experiments that the capability of TG translation learned on our dataset can be transferred to other TR tasks and benchmarks. On top of that, we teach LLM to perform deliberate reasoning over the TGs via Chain-of-Thought (CoT) bootstrapping and graph data augmentation. We observed that those strategies, which maintain a balance between usefulness and diversity, bring more reliable CoTs and final results than the vanilla CoT distillation.

Key facts. Cited by 110 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Knowledge- and tool-augmented reasoning, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 40 of its 90 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 12 Jan 2024.

Builds on

40 of 90 references.

Closest ancestors · 3

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2023TEILP: Time Prediction over Knowledge Graphs via Logical Reasoning25 Dec
  2. 2023Towards Robust Temporal Reasoning of Large Language Models via a Multi-Hop QA Dataset and Pseudo-Instruction Tuning16 Nov
  3. 2023Once Upon a textitTime in textitGraph: Relative-Time Pretraining for Complex Temporal Reasoning23 Oct

Other references · 37

  1. 2023GPT-4 Technical Reportcited by 18,132
  2. 2022Training language models to follow instructions with human feedbackcited by 15,712
  3. 2021LoRA: Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Modelscited by 14,084
  4. 2023LLaMA: Open and Efficient Foundation Language Modelscited by 13,958
  5. 2020Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Knowledge-Intensive NLP Taskscited by 9,160
  6. 2022Large Language Models are Zero-Shot Reasonerscited by 4,323
  7. 2023Toolformer: Language Models Can Teach Themselves to Use Toolscited by 4,072
  8. 2021Show Your Work: Scratchpads for Intermediate Computation with Language Modelscited by 871
  9. 2023Reasoning with Language Model is Planning with World Modelcited by 846
  10. 2023Logic-LM: Empowering Large Language Models with Symbolic Solvers for Faithful Logical Reasoningcited by 379
  11. 2022Language Models Are Greedy Reasoners: A Systematic Formal Analysis of Chain-of-Thoughtcited by 334
  12. 2022Large Language Models Are Reasoning Teacherscited by 318
25 more
  1. 2023ToolQA: A Dataset for LLM Question Answering with External Toolscited by 273
  2. 2021A Dataset for Answering Time-Sensitive Questionscited by 150
  3. 2018Learning Sequence Encoders for Temporal Knowledge Graph Completioncited by 145
  4. 2019"Going on a vacation" takes longer than "Going for a walk": A Study of Temporal Commonsense Understandingcited by 121
  5. 2020RNNLogic: Learning Logic Rules for Reasoning on Knowledge Graphscited by 117
  6. 2023SCOTT: Self-Consistent Chain-of-Thought Distillationcited by 103
  7. 2023Large Language Models can Learn Rulescited by 66
  8. 2020TORQUE: A Reading Comprehension Dataset of Temporal Ordering Questionscited by 65
  9. 2019Joint Reasoning for Temporal and Causal Relationscited by 60
  10. 2021TLogic: Temporal Logical Rules for Explainable Link Forecasting on Temporal Knowledge Graphscited by 59
  11. 2023Harnessing the Power of Large Language Models for Natural Language to First-Order Logic Translationcited by 59
  12. 2020Temporal Reasoning on Implicit Events from Distant Supervisioncited by 58
  13. 2021TIMEDIAL: Temporal Commonsense Reasoning in Dialogcited by 55
  14. 2023Grounding Complex Natural Language Commands for Temporal Tasks in Unseen Environmentscited by 52
  15. 2023Do Large Language Models Know about Facts?cited by 49
  16. 2021Time Masking for Temporal Language Modelscited by 46
  17. 2019Learn to Explain Efficiently via Neural Logic Inductive Learningcited by 38
  18. 2020Temporal Common Sense Acquisition with Minimal Supervisioncited by 38
  19. 2022Is Neuro-Symbolic AI Meeting its Promise in Natural Language Processing? A Structured Reviewcited by 37
  20. 2023Time is Encoded in the Weights of Finetuned Language Modelscited by 31
  21. 2019Inductive Logic Programming via Differentiable Deep Neural Logic Networkscited by 25
  22. 2023Gentopia: A Collaborative Platform for Tool-Augmented LLMscited by 25
  23. 2021Neuro-Symbolic AI: An Emerging Class of AI Workloads and their Characterizationcited by 22
  24. 2019Learning Algorithms via Neural Logic Networkscited by 17
  25. 2020Improving Event Duration Prediction via Time-aware Pre-trainingcited by 13

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2024: 48; 2025: 48; 2026: 14.

110 papers.

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  1. 2025BIG-Bench Extra Hardcited by 123
  2. 2024Graph Chain-of-Thought: Augmenting Large Language Models by Reasoning on Graphscited by 116
  3. 2024All in One and One for All: A Simple yet Effective Method towards Cross-domain Graph Pretrainingcited by 84
  4. 2024Test of Time: A Benchmark for Evaluating LLMs on Temporal Reasoningcited by 83
  5. 2024UniGraph: Learning a Unified Cross-Domain Foundation Model for Text-Attributed Graphscited by 60
  6. 2024Large Language Models-guided Dynamic Adaptation for Temporal Knowledge Graph Reasoningcited by 41
  7. 2024DELTA: Decomposed Efficient Long-Term Robot Task Planning using Large Language Modelscited by 33
  8. 2024Graph Machine Learning in the Era of Large Language Models (LLMs)cited by 33
  9. 2024SHIELD: Evaluation and Defense Strategies for Copyright Compliance in LLM Text Generationcited by 33
  10. 2024Data Augmentation using Large Language Models: Data Perspectives, Learning Paradigms and Challengescited by 30
  11. 2024VideoINSTA: Zero-shot Long Video Understanding via Informative Spatial-Temporal Reasoning with LLMscited by 29
  12. 2024Call Me When Necessary: LLMs can Efficiently and Faithfully Reason over Structured Environmentscited by 27
38 more
  1. 2024Chain-of-Action: Faithful and Multimodal Question Answering through Large Language Modelscited by 27
  2. 2024MM-Soc: Benchmarking Multimodal Large Language Models in Social Media Platformscited by 26
  3. 2024Learning to Plan for Retrieval-Augmented Large Language Models from Knowledge Graphscited by 24
  4. 2024Harnessing Earnings Reports for Stock Predictions: A QLoRA-Enhanced LLM Approachcited by 24
  5. 2025Time-R1: Towards Comprehensive Temporal Reasoning in LLMscited by 23
  6. 2024Adaptive Ensembles of Fine-Tuned Transformers for LLM-Generated Text Detectioncited by 22
  7. 2024Theoretical Analysis of Meta Reinforcement Learning: Generalization Bounds and Convergence Guaranteescited by 22
  8. 2024Timo: Towards Better Temporal Reasoning for Language Modelscited by 21
  9. 2025A Survey of Reasoning and Agentic Systems in Time Series with Large Language Modelscited by 21
  10. 2024MedHalu: Hallucinations in Responses to Healthcare Queries by Large Language Modelscited by 20
  11. 2024Two-stage Generative Question Answering on Temporal Knowledge Graph Using Large Language Modelscited by 18
  12. 2024Chain-of-History Reasoning for Temporal Knowledge Graph Forecastingcited by 17
  13. 2024A Survey of Large Language Models on Generative Graph Analytics: Query, Learning, and Applicationscited by 17
  14. 2025ChronoSense: Exploring Temporal Understanding in Large Language Models with Time Intervals of Eventscited by 17
  15. 2025Reasoning in Computer Vision: Taxonomy, Models, Tasks, and Methodologiescited by 17
  16. 2024TRACE the Evidence: Constructing Knowledge-Grounded Reasoning Chains for Retrieval-Augmented Generationcited by 16
  17. 2024Towards Rationality in Language and Multimodal Agents: A Surveycited by 15
  18. 2024Diet-ODIN: A Novel Framework for Opioid Misuse Detection with Interpretable Dietary Patternscited by 14
  19. 2025TempRetriever: Fusion-based Temporal Dense Passage Retrieval for Time-Sensitive Questionscited by 14
  20. 2024RealTCD: Temporal Causal Discovery from Interventional Data with Large Language Modelcited by 13
  21. 2024The New Agronomists: Language Models are Experts in Crop Managementcited by 12
  22. 2025It's High Time: A Survey of Temporal Question Answeringcited by 12
  23. 2024Beyond Math: Stories as a Testbed for Memorization-Constrained Reasoning in LLMscited by 11
  24. 2024SemanticFormer: Holistic and Semantic Traffic Scene Representation for Trajectory Prediction using Knowledge Graphscited by 10
  25. 2024Right this way: Can VLMs Guide Us to See More to Answer Questions?cited by 10
  26. 2025Inferring Events from Time Series using Language Modelscited by 10
  27. 2025A Study into Investigating Temporal Robustness of LLMscited by 10
  28. 2024EventGround: Narrative Reasoning by Grounding to Eventuality-centric Knowledge Graphscited by 9
  29. 2024Temporal Knowledge Graph Question Answering: A Surveycited by 9
  30. 2024Recent Advancement of Emotion Cognition in Large Language Modelscited by 9
  31. 2025Examining and Adapting Time for Multilingual Classification via Mixture of Temporal Expertscited by 9
  32. 2025TCP: a Benchmark for Temporal Constraint-Based Planningcited by 8
  33. 2024HOTVCOM: Generating Buzzworthy Comments for Videoscited by 7
  34. 2025Your LLM Agents are Temporally Blind: The Misalignment Between Tool Use Decisions and Human Time Perceptioncited by 7
  35. 2024DiLA: Enhancing LLM Tool Learning with Differential Logic Layercited by 6
  36. 2025Date Fragments: A Hidden Bottleneck of Tokenization for Temporal Reasoningcited by 6
  37. 2025Around the World in 24 Hours: Probing LLM Knowledge of Time and Placecited by 6
  38. 2025T-GRAG: A Dynamic GraphRAG Framework for Resolving Temporal Conflicts and Redundancy in Knowledge Retrievalcited by 6

50 most cited of 110 All 110 (JSON)

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  1. 2025MemoTime: Memory-Augmented Temporal Knowledge Graph Enhanced Large Language Model Reasoning
  2. 2026LLM-Guided Knowledge Distillation for Temporal Knowledge Graph Reasoning
  3. 2025Towards Explainable Temporal Reasoning in Large Language Models: A Structure-Aware Generative Framework
  4. 2026Knowledge Distillation for Temporal Knowledge Graph Reasoning with Large Language Models
  5. 2025Learning to Reason Over Time: Timeline Self-Reflection for Improved Temporal Reasoning in Language Models
  6. 2025Learn to Think: Bootstrapping LLM Reasoning Capability Through Graph Representation Learning
  7. 2025Temporal Reasoning with Large Language Models Augmented by Evolving Knowledge Graphs
  8. 2025Temporal Sampling for Forgotten Reasoning in LLMs