Temporal Relation Classification: An XAI Perspective

Sofia Elena Terenziani


Abstract
Temporal annotations are used to identify and mark up temporal information, offering definition into how it is expressed through linguistic properties in text. This study investigates various discriminative pre-trained language models of differing sizes on a temporal relation classification task. We define valid reasoning strategies based on the linguistic principles that guide commonly used temporal annotations. Using a combination of saliency-based and counterfactual explanations, we examine if the models’ decisions are in line with these strategies. Our findings suggest that the selected models do not rely on the expected linguistic cues for processing temporal information effectively.
Anthology ID:
2025.nodalida-1.72
Volume:
Proceedings of the Joint 25th Nordic Conference on Computational Linguistics and 11th Baltic Conference on Human Language Technologies (NoDaLiDa/Baltic-HLT 2025)
Month:
march
Year:
2025
Address:
Tallinn, Estonia
Editors:
Richard Johansson, Sara Stymne
Venue:
NoDaLiDa
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Publisher:
University of Tartu Library
Note:
Pages:
714–728
Language:
URL:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/fix-sig-urls/2025.nodalida-1.72/
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Cite (ACL):
Sofia Elena Terenziani. 2025. Temporal Relation Classification: An XAI Perspective. In Proceedings of the Joint 25th Nordic Conference on Computational Linguistics and 11th Baltic Conference on Human Language Technologies (NoDaLiDa/Baltic-HLT 2025), pages 714–728, Tallinn, Estonia. University of Tartu Library.
Cite (Informal):
Temporal Relation Classification: An XAI Perspective (Terenziani, NoDaLiDa 2025)
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https://preview.aclanthology.org/fix-sig-urls/2025.nodalida-1.72.pdf