Large Vocabulary Size Improves Large Language Models
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Abstract (arXiv)
This paper empirically investigates the relationship between subword vocabulary size and the performance of large language models (LLMs) to provide insights on how to define the vocabulary size. Experimental results show that larger vocabulary sizes lead to better performance in LLMs. Moreover, we consider a continual training scenario where a pre-trained language model is trained on a different target language. We introduce a simple method to use a new vocabulary instead of the pre-defined one. We show that using the new vocabulary outperforms the model with the vocabulary used in pre-training.
Key facts. Cited by 11 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 34 of its 48 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 24 Jun 2024.
Builds on
34 of 48 references.
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22 more
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Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2024: 1; 2025: 5; 2026: 5.
11 papers.
- 2025Scaling Behavior of Discrete Diffusion Language Modelscited by 32
- 2025The Rise of Small Language Models in Healthcare: A Comprehensive Surveycited by 18
- 2025Model-Aware Tokenizer Transfercited by 5
- 2024The Fair Language Model Paradoxcited by 3
- 2025Hyperbolic Large Language Modelscited by 2
- 2026ConceptMoE: Adaptive Token-to-Concept Compression for Implicit Compute Allocationcited by 2
- 2026JTok: On Token Embedding as another Axis of Scaling Law via Joint Token Self-modulationcited by 2
- 2025Chem42: a Family of chemical Language Models for Target-aware Ligand Generationcited by 1
- 2026Barriers to Universal Reasoning With Transformers (And How to Overcome Them)cited by 1
- 2026NanoSpec: Accelerating Speculative Decoding using Minimalist In-Context Vocabulariescited by 1
- 2026The Query Channel: Information-Theoretic Limits of Masking-Based Explanationscited by 0
- 2026Barriers to Universal Reasoning With Transformers (And How to Overcome Them)28 Apr 2026
- 2026The Query Channel: Information-Theoretic Limits of Masking-Based Explanations17 Apr 2026
- 2026NanoSpec: Accelerating Speculative Decoding using Minimalist In-Context Vocabularies8 Apr 2026
- 2026JTok: On Token Embedding as another Axis of Scaling Law via Joint Token Self-modulation31 Jan 2026
- 2026ConceptMoE: Adaptive Token-to-Concept Compression for Implicit Compute Allocation29 Jan 2026
- 2025Scaling Behavior of Discrete Diffusion Language Models11 Dec 2025
- 2025Model-Aware Tokenizer Transfer24 Oct 2025
- 2025Hyperbolic Large Language Models6 Sep 2025
- 2025The Rise of Small Language Models in Healthcare: A Comprehensive Survey23 Apr 2025
- 2025Chem42: a Family of chemical Language Models for Target-aware Ligand Generation20 Mar 2025
- 2024The Fair Language Model Paradox15 Oct 2024