Are the LLMs Capable of Maintaining at Least the Language Genus?

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2510.21561v1
• Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2025 15:20:40 GMT
• Title: Are the LLMs Capable of Maintaining at Least the Language Genus?
• Authors: Sandra Mitrović, David Kletz, Ljiljana Dolamic, Fabio Rinaldi,
• Abstract summary: We show that genus-level effects are present but strongly conditioned by training resource availability.<n>Our findings suggest that LLMs encode aspects of genus-level structure, but training data imbalances remain the primary factor shaping their multilingual performance.
• Score: 5.748049484273442
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
• Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) display notable variation in multilingual behavior, yet the role of genealogical language structure in shaping this variation remains underexplored. In this paper, we investigate whether LLMs exhibit sensitivity to linguistic genera by extending prior analyses on the MultiQ dataset. We first check if models prefer to switch to genealogically related languages when prompt language fidelity is not maintained. Next, we investigate whether knowledge consistency is better preserved within than across genera. We show that genus-level effects are present but strongly conditioned by training resource availability. We further observe distinct multilingual strategies across LLMs families. Our findings suggest that LLMs encode aspects of genus-level structure, but training data imbalances remain the primary factor shaping their multilingual performance.

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