Toward a Functional Geometric Algebra for Natural Language Semantics

arXiv:2604.25902v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Distributional and neural approaches to natural language semantics have been built almost exclusively on conventional linear algebra: vectors, matrices, tensors, and the operations that accompany them. These methods have achieved remarkable empirical success, yet they face persistent structural limitations in compositional semantics, type sensitivity, and interpretability. I argue in this paper that geometric algebra (GA) -- specifically, Clifford algebras -- provides a mathematically superior foundation for semantic representation, and that a Functional Geometric Algebra (FGA) framework extends GA toward a typed, compositional semantics capable of supporting inference, transformation, and interpretability while retaining full compatibility with distributional learning and modern neural architectures. I develop the formal foundations, identify three core capabilities that GA provides and linear algebra does not, present a detailed worked example illustrating operator-level semantic contrasts, and show how GA-based operations already implicit in current transformer architectures can be made explicit and extended. The central claim is not merely increased dimensionality but increased structural organization: GA expands an n-dimensional embedding space into a 2^n multivector algebra where base semantic concepts and their higher-order interactions are represented within a single, principled algebraic framework.

Source: arXiv cs.CL | 2026-04-29

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