Relation Before Entity: Deferred Commitment in Language Model Factual Recall

Computer Science > Computation and Language

[Submitted on 13 Jul 2026]

Title:Relation Before Entity: Deferred Commitment in Language Model Factual Recall

View PDF HTML (experimental)Abstract:We ask whether relation-type information (e.g., capital-of) and entity-specific information (e.g., France to Paris) become causally active at the final-token position at the same depth during recall. Using four complementary causal diagnostics across four decoder-only models and eight prompt families, we find a robust temporal asymmetry: relation information becomes generation-controlling before entity information does. Relation onset precedes entity onset by 10-16 tested layers (31-44% of network depth) at threshold 0.4, with the ordering holding across all 16 model-threshold combinations for thresholds 0.2-0.5. Critically, entity information is not absent early: entity-token patching succeeds at 90-100% in early layers. Instead, entity commitment to generation is deferred: entity information is available at the entity-token position but becomes generation-controlling at the final token only after being routed there.

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