AI RESEARCH
Is Cross-Lingual Transfer in Bilingual Models Human-Like? A Study with Overlapping Word Forms in Dutch and English
arXiv CS.CL
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ArXi:2604.07067v1 Announce Type: new Bilingual speakers show cross-lingual activation during reading, especially for words with shared surface form. Cognates (friends) typically lead to facilitation, whereas interlingual homographs (false friends) cause interference or no effect. We examine whether cross-lingual activation in bilingual language models mirrors these patterns. We train Dutch-English causal Transformers under four vocabulary-sharing conditions that manipulate whether (false) friends receive shared or language-specific embeddings.