The Etymology Tax: Etymological Register Effects on LLM Multi-Step Reasoning
This study tests whether the etymological register of input text affects large language model performance on multi-step reasoning tasks. Using 250 murder mystery narratives from the MuSR benchmark, eight models were evaluated across six conditions in a 2x3 factorial design crossing vocabulary register (baseline, Germanic, Latinate) with explicit clarification (present, absent). Both Germanic and L...