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Process supervision has emerged as a promising approach for enhancing LLM reasoning, yet existing methods fail to distinguish meaningful progress from mere verbosity, leading to limited reasoning capabilities and unresolved token inefficiency. To address this, we propose Stage-aware Hierarchical Advantage via Potential Estimation (SHAPE), a framework that formalizes reasoning as a trajectory through a state space of empirical solvability. SHAPE introduces a hierarchical credit assignment mechanism: at the segment level, it employs a stage-aware advantage function to prioritize efficient breakthroughs in low-potential states; at the token level, it utilizes entropy-driven redistribution to sharpen execution signals. Extensive experiments in math reasoning across three base models and five benchmarks demonstrate that SHAPE achieves an average accuracy gain of 3% with 30% reduced token consumption.

ACL 2026

SHAPE: Stage-aware Hierarchical Advantage via Potential Estimation for LLM Reasoning

It is my great pleasure and honor to welcome you to the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL 2026), held in San Diego, California, USA, July 2–7, 2026. ACL 2026 continues our fields tradition of excellence in scholarship, innovation, and inclusivity, and I am deeply grateful to the many volunteers who have worked tirelessly to bring this event to life.

It is exciting to see the many developments in the field reflected at our conference, such as the advancement of large language models (born out of our community) into many application directions. This is not without challenges, partly due to unsolved problems, and partly due to misuse of the technology. All this is reflected well at ACL 2026. The conference also reflects that the field is not only about advancing technology, but also the science of fundamentally understanding language and how it is use by many different speaker communities. <br>
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The 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL 2026) will take place in San Diego, California, from July 2 - 7, 2026.

technical paper

Composed Image Retrieval (CIR) is an important image retrieval paradigm that enables users to retrieve a target image using a multimodal query that consists of a reference image and modification text. Although research on CIR has made significant progress, prevailing setups still rely simple modification texts that typically cover only a limited range of salient changes, which induces two limitations highly relevant to practical applications, namely Insufficient Entity Coverage and Clause-Entity Misalignment. In order to address these issues and bring CIR closer to real-world use, we construct two instruction-rich multi-modification datasets, M-FashionIQ and M-CIRR. In addition, we propose TEMA, the Text-oriented Entity Mapping Architecture, which is the first CIR framework designed for multi-modification while also accommodating simple modifications. Extensive experiments on four benchmark datasets demonstrate that TEMA's superiority in both original and multi-modification scenarios, while maintaining an optimal balance between retrieval accuracy and computational efficiency. Our codes and constructed multi-modification dataset (M-FashionIQ and M-CIRR) are available at https://github.com/lee-zixu/ACL26-TEMA/

TEMA: Anchor the Image, Follow the Text for Multi-Modification Composed Image Retrieval

Tables contain rich structured information, yet when stored as images their contents remain "locked" within pixels. Converting table images into LaTeX code enables faithful digitization and reuse, but current multimodal large language models (MLLMs) often fail to preserve structural, style, or content fidelity. Conventional post-training with reinforcement learning (RL) typically relies on a single aggregated reward, leading to reward ambiguity that conflates multiple behavioral aspects and hinders effective optimization. We propose Component-Specific Policy Optimization (CSPO), an RL framework that disentangles optimization across LaTeX tables components—structure, style, and content. In particular, CSPO assigns component-specific rewards and backpropagates each signal only through the tokens relevant to its component, alleviating reward ambiguity and enabling targeted component-wise optimization. To comprehensively assess performance, we introduce a set of hierarchical evaluation metrics. Extensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of CSPO, underscoring the importance of component-specific optimization for reliable structured generation.

CSPO: Alleviating Reward Ambiguity for Structured Table-to-LaTeX Generation

Forced alignment (FA) predicts start and end timestamps for words or characters in speech, but existing methods are language-specific and prone to cumulative temporal shifts. The multilingual speech understanding and long-sequence processing abilities of speech large language models (SLLMs) make them promising for FA in multilingual, crosslingual, and long-form speech settings. However, directly applying the next-token prediction paradigm of SLLMs to FA results in hallucinations and slow inference. To bridge the gap, we propose LLM-ForcedAligner, reformulating FA as a slot-filling paradigm: timestamps are treated as discrete indices, and special timestamp tokens are inserted as slots into the transcript. Conditioned on the speech embeddings and the transcript with slots, the SLLM directly predicts the time indices at slots. During training, causal attention masking with non-shifted input and label sequences allows each slot to predict its own timestamp index based on itself and preceding context, with loss computed only at slot positions. Dynamic slot insertion enables FA at arbitrary positions. Moreover, non-autoregressive inference is supported, avoiding hallucinations and improving speed. Experiments across multilingual, crosslingual, and long-form speech scenarios show that LLM-ForcedAligner achieves a 69%~78% relative reduction in accumulated averaging shift compared with prior methods. The checkpoint and inference code will be released later.

LLM-ForcedAligner: A Non-Autoregressive and Accurate LLM-Based Forced Aligner for Multilingual and Long-Form Speech

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) grounds language models in external evidence, but multi-hop question answering remains difficult because iterative pipelines must control what to retrieve next and when the available evidence is adequate. In practice, systems may answer from incomplete evidence chains, or they may accumulate redundant or distractor-heavy text that interferes with later retrieval and reasoning. We propose S2G-RAG (Structured Sufficiency and Gap-judging RAG), an iterative framework with an explicit controller, S2G-Judge. At each turn, S2G-Judge predicts whether the current evidence memory supports answering and, if not, outputs structured gap items that describe the missing information. We map these gap items into the next retrieval query, producing stable multi-turn retrieval trajectories. To reduce noise accumulation, we maintain a sentence-level Evidence Context by extracting a compact set of relevant sentences from retrieved documents. Experiments on TriviaQA, HotpotQA, and 2WikiMultiHopQA show that S2G-RAG improves multi-hop QA performance and robustness under multi-turn retrieval. Furthermore, S2G-RAG can be integrated into existing RAG pipelines with a lightweight component, without modifying the search engine or retraining the generator.

S2G-RAG: Structured Sufficiency and Gap Judging for Iterative Retrieval-Augmented QA

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) has become a key paradigm for reducing factual hallucinations in Large Language Models (LLMs), yet little is known about how the order of retrieved documents affects model behavior. We empirically show that under a Top-5 retrieval setting with the gold document included, LLM answers vary substantially across permutations of the retrieved set, even when the gold document is fixed in the first position. This reveals a previously underexplored sensitivity to retrieval permutations. Although existing robust RAG methods focus primarily on enhancing LLM robustness to low-quality retrieval and mitigating positional bias to distribute attention fairly over long contexts, neither approach directly addresses permutation sensitivity. In this paper, we propose Stable-RAG, which exploits permutation sensitivity estimation to mitigate permutation-induced hallucinations. Stable-RAG runs the generator under multiple retrieval orders, clusters hidden states, and decodes from a cluster-center representation that captures the dominant reasoning pattern. It then uses these reasoning results to align hallucinated outputs toward the correct answer, encouraging the model to produce consistent and accurate predictions across document permutations. Experiments on three QA datasets show that Stable-RAG improves answer accuracy, reasoning consistency, and generalization across datasets, retrievers, and input lengths compared with strong baselines.

Stable-RAG: Mitigating Retrieval-Permutation-Induced Hallucinations in Retrieval-Augmented Generation

Code Large Language Models face critical Time-To-First-Token (TTFT) latency challenges when handling long code completion due to the quadratic complexity ($O(n^2)$) of attention mechanisms. While existing sparse attention methods attempt to address this issue, they suffer from three key limitations: (1) general sparse patterns cause excessive accuracy degradation without considering code structure, (2) code-specific methods achieve only logical sparsity without actual computational speedup, and (3) limited adaptation to complex scenarios such as repository-level completion. We propose **SabreCoder**, a training-free **S**tructure-**a**ware **b**lock-spa**r**s**e** attention mechanism that bridges the gap between logical and computational sparsity. SabreCoder parses code into semantic chunks, constructs chunk-level sparse patterns through dependency analysis and similarity matching, and maps them to GPU-friendly block-sparse formats. Extensive experiments on LCC and CrossCodeEval benchmarks demonstrate that SabreCoder reduces TTFT by 45-55\% while maintaining accuracy within 3\% of dense attention.

From Logical to Computational Sparsity: Structure-Aware Block-Sparse Attention for Long-Code Completion

The GPT-4 technical report suggests that downstream performance can be predicted from pre-training signals, but offers little methodological detail on how to quantify this. This work address this gap by modeling knowledge retention, the capacity of a pre-trained language model to memorize factual information from its corpus, and introduce a principled method to estimate it prior to training. We propose Size-dependent Mutual Information (SMI), an information-theoretic predictor that integrates knowledge frequency, knowledge specificity, and model size to forecast closed-book question answering (QA) accuracy. SMI is validated through large-scale document retrieval over the disclosed pre-training corpora of 21 public and 3 custom models, combined with a robust multi-template QA evaluation. Experiments show that SMI significantly outperforms repetition-based baselines and achieves R² > 0.7 in predicting QA accuracy for models above 1B parameters, without additional training. The analysis further reveals diminishing returns from scaling data and model size and provides evidence for an intrinsic upper bound on knowledge retention achievable by pre-training alone, motivating retrieval and other augmentation strategies.

Beyond Scaling: Measuring and Predicting the Upper Bound of Knowledge Retention in Language Model Pre-Training

The rapid expansion of the Model Context Protocol (MCP) ecosystem introduces a combinatorially complex tool space, rendering existing frameworks inadequate for comprehensive agent evaluation. To address this problem, we propose SGVEF-LOOP, a coverage-guided framework for progressive topological exploration and fact-augmented metamorphic testing. SGVEF operates via a synergistic closed loop: it navigates sparse regions using adaptive sampling, synthesizes oracle-free metamorphic pairs grounded in static knowledge, enforces dual-constraint validation to ensure consistency and solvability, and leverages execution feedback to iteratively optimize exploration. Deploying this framework yields a high-fidelity benchmark achieving 100% node coverage and saturating 80.54% of the theoretical transition bound (estimated via Chao1). Evaluation of 8 diverse MCP Agents reveals capability stratification and exposes critical behavioral anomalies---such as reasoning instability---that conventional metrics fail to capture. Consequently, this work establishes a generalizable paradigm for scalable, rigorous agent evaluation in dynamic environments.

SGVEF-LOOP: Coverage-Guided Progressive Topological Exploration and Fact-Grounded Metamorphic Evaluation for MCP Agents

Long-term memory enables large language model (LLM) agents to support personalized and sustained interactions.
However, most work on personalized agents prioritizes utility and user experience, treating memory as a neutral component and largely overlooking its safety implications.
In this paper, we reveal intent legitimation, a previously underexplored safety failure in personalized agents, where benign personal memories bias intent inference and cause models to legitimize inherently harmful queries.
To study this phenomenon, we introduce PS-Bench, a benchmark designed to identify and quantify intent legitimation in personalized interactions.
Across multiple memory-augmented agent frameworks and base LLMs, personalization increases attack success rates by **15.8%–243.7%** relative to stateless baselines.
We further provide mechanistic evidence for intent legitimation from internal representation space, and propose a lightweight detection–reflection method that effectively reduces safety degradation.
Overall, our work provides the first systematic exploration and evaluation of intent legitimation as a safety failure mode that naturally arises from benign, real-world personalization, highlighting the importance of assessing safety under long-term personal context. **WARNING:** This paper may contain harmful content.

When Personalization Legitimizes Risks: Uncovering Safety Vulnerabilities in Personalized Dialogue Agents

Hyperparameters are critical to LLM reinforcement learning (RL), but existing hyperparameter optimization (HPO) methods remain inefficient in this area, due to the massive model scale and resource-intensive training cycles. In this paper, we propose Joint Fidelity Hyperparameter Optimization (JF-HPO), which simultaneously adapts both model size and training budget as fidelity. JF-HPO is empowered by: (i) a small proxy model of the target LLM for efficient training and evaluation in each HPO trial; (ii) several carefully designed early-stopping strategies based on training dynamics; (iii) an efficient checkpointing mechanism to eliminate redundant computations. JF-HPO significantly improves the computational efficiency of each trial (up to 14.9$\times$) compared with existing HPO methods, thus achieving better predictive accuracy in most cases under the same time budget. Notably, JF-HPO delivers performance improvements ranging from 5.8\% to 111.6\% over VeRL Recipe.

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TEMA: Anchor the Image, Follow the Text for Multi-Modification Composed Image Retrieval

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