# Integrating Large Language Models with Graph-based Reasoning for Conversational Question Answering

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.09506 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.09506/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Knowledge- and tool-augmented reasoning, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning.
- Builds on 11 of its 56 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 14 Jun 2024.

## Placed in

- LLM reasoning / [Knowledge- and tool-augmented reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/lr/knowledge-and-tool-augmented-reasoning/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 11 of 11)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [Llama 2: Open Foundation and Fine-Tuned Chat Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.09288/) (2023)
- [Outrageously Large Neural Networks: The Sparsely-Gated Mixture-of-Experts Layer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1701.06538/) (2017)
- [Mistral 7B](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.06825/) (2023)
- [Language is All a Graph Needs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.07134/) (2023)
- [Embers of Autoregression: Understanding Large Language Models Through the Problem They are Trained to Solve](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.13638/) (2023)
- [Let Your Graph Do the Talking: Encoding Structured Data for LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.05862/) (2024)
- [Tokenization counts: the impact of tokenization on arithmetic in frontier LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.14903/) (2024)
- [GraphLLM: Boosting Graph Reasoning Ability of Large Language Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.05845/) (2023)
- [Can LLMs Effectively Leverage Graph Structural Information through Prompts, and Why?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.16595/) (2023)
- [PixT3: Pixel-based Table-To-Text Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.09808/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [Large Language Models Meet Knowledge Graphs for Question Answering: Synthesis and Opportunities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.20099/) (2025)
- [SEAL: Self-Evolving Agentic Learning for Conversational Question Answering over Knowledge Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.04868/) (2025)
- [Back2Struct: Making Structured Images Editable Again](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.37016/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We focus on a conversational question answering task which combines the challenges of understanding questions in context and reasoning over evidence gathered from heterogeneous sources like text, knowledge graphs, tables, and infoboxes. Our method utilizes a graph structured representation to aggregate information about a question and its context (i.e., the conversation so far and evidence retrieved to find an answer), while also harnessing the reasoning and text generation capabilities of large language models (LLMs). Graph embeddings are directly injected into the LLM, bypassing the token embedding layers, and learned end-to-end by minimizing cross-entropy. Our model maintains a memory module to track and update past evidence, thus influencing the graph's structure, as the conversation evolves. Experimental results on the ConvMix benchmark(Christmann et al., 2022a) show that graph embeddings enhance the LLM's ability to reason, while the memory module provides robustness against noise and retrieval errors.
