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Emergent Hierarchical Structure in Large Language Models: An Information-Theoretic Framework for Multi-Scale Representation

Computation and Language 2026-05-07 v3 Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

Why do language models from different architecture families respond so differently to the same perturbation? We argue that the answer is not scale, but \emph{how architecture shapes information compression}. Analyzing eight Transformer models (7B--70B parameters) from the Llama and Qwen families, we show that every model spontaneously develops discrete functional boundaries dividing its layers into Local, Intermediate, and Global processing segments -- yet boundary locations and per-segment brittleness are determined overwhelmingly by architecture family rather than model size or training configuration. We formalize this regularity as the \textbf{Multi-Scale Probabilistic Generation Theory} (MSPGT), which models an autoregressive Transformer as a Hierarchical Variational Information Bottleneck system and derives a tiered set of falsifiable predictions. Three predictions are strongly confirmed: all eight models exhibit two prominent phase-transition boundaries (P1.1); Llama boundary positions are stable across a 10×10{\times} parameter range (CV=0.067\mathrm{CV}{=}0.067--0.0950.095) while Qwen positions vary widely (CV=0.465\mathrm{CV}{=}0.465--0.7260.726), precisely matching our strong- and weak-dominance conditions; and cross-architecture local-segment brittleness spans \textbf{three orders of magnitude} (493×493{\times} ratio) -- a gap that architecture family alone predicts and that dwarfs any within-family or scale-driven variation.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2505.18244,
  title  = {Emergent Hierarchical Structure in Large Language Models: An Information-Theoretic Framework for Multi-Scale Representation},
  author = {Yukin Zhang and Qi Dong and Kemu Xu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2505.18244},
  year   = {2026}
}
R2 v1 2026-07-01T02:34:39.439Z