Papers › Toward Interpretable Semantic Textual Similarity via Optimal Transport-based...

Toward Interpretable Semantic Textual Similarity via Optimal Transport-based Contrastive Sentence Learning

26 Feb 2022ACL 2022 5arXiv:2202.13196archive 2025-07-28

Seonghyeon Lee, Dongha Lee, Seongbo Jang, Hwanjo Yu

Recently, finetuning a pretrained language model to capture the similarity between sentence embeddings has shown the state-of-the-art performance on the semantic textual similarity (STS) task. However, the absence of an interpretation method for the sentence similarity makes it difficult to explain the model output. In this work, we explicitly describe the sentence distance as the weighted sum of contextualized token distances on the basis of a transportation problem, and then present the optimal transport-based distance measure, named RCMD; it identifies and leverages semantically-aligned token pairs. In the end, we propose CLRCMD, a contrastive learning framework that optimizes RCMD of sentence pairs, which enhances the quality of sentence similarity and their interpretation. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our learning framework outperforms other baselines on both STS and interpretable-STS benchmarks, indicating that it computes effective sentence similarity and also provides interpretation consistent with human judgement. The code and checkpoint are publicly available at https://github.com/sh0416/clrcmd.

PaperPDFConference PDFCodeCode Syntology ran

In Syntology Open this paper in Syntology's Atlas, the map of the papers in Syntology's graph and their citations.

For agents, Syntology's MCP tool lists every function and class Syntology harvested from this paper and whether it ran (how to connect): get_harvested_code_for_paper(arxiv_id="2202.13196")

Code

Syntology Ran 3 of 3 code samples harvested from 1 repository linked to this paper; 0 have no recorded run. Of those that ran: 2 ran · our draft was wrong; 1 ran with no contract checked.

By repository: official repository: 3 samples from 1 repository, 3 ran. The run record, sample by sample. “Ran” means executed on a synthesized input, not that the code is correct or reproduces the paper.

sh0416/clrcmd officialmentioned in papermentioned on GitHubpytorch report

Repository list and official/mentioned flags are the archive's, frozen 2025-07-28. Reachability, where shown, is from one Syntology probe window (2026-09-16 to 2026-09-18); repositories not probed show nothing. GitHub stars are not tracked.

Code Syntology ran Syntology

3 samples harvested; 3 ran; 0 honoured the contract we drafted; 0 have no recorded run. Read from Syntology's graph 2026-09-24; that is when this build read the record, not when the samples ran.

2ran · our draft was wrong
1ran

Licence: 3 of the 3 samples are pointer only, meaning Syntology does not serve that copy's text. This page shows no code text for any sample; each one links to its file in the repository.

Harvested from sh0416/clrcmd. “Ran” means the sample executed on a synthesized input. It does not mean the output is correct, and nothing here reproduces the paper's results. “Honoured” and “violated” refer to a contract Syntology drafted from the code itself; “our draft was wrong” and “fixture could not drive it” are failures of Syntology's instrument, not of the code.

Each sample ends with its code_sha256, Syntology's identity for that exact code. An agent fetches the stored sample with Syntology's MCP tool get_code(code_sha256="…") (how to connect); click an identity to copy that call.

Repository labels, per sample. official repository: The archive marks this repository official for the paper. named in the paper: The archive records that the paper mentions this repository; it is not marked official. community (archive-listed): In the archive's code links for this paper, not marked official and not recorded as mentioned in the paper. found in paper text by Syntology: Syntology found this repository in the paper's own text; whether it is the authors' implementation is not asserted. community: Not in the archive's code links for this paper; a community repository Syntology harvested. Samples from a repository marked official are listed first. Licence labels name the repository's licence as recorded at harvest. “Pointer only” means Syntology does not serve that copy's text, for one of four reasons: no licence file was found; the licence was not identified; the licence is recorded as permissive but that copy's record is not marked cleared; or the licence is outside the permissive list Syntology serves text under (MIT, Apache-2.0, BSD and similar). Some licences outside that list permit redistribution, such as WTFPL, and GPL-3.0 under its conditions; they are simply not on the list. Hover a licence label for the reason. File links open the file on GitHub at the default branch, which may have changed since the harvest.

RelaxedWordMoverSimilarity sh0416/clrcmd/src/clrcmd/models.py official repository ran · metamorphic tier: well formed licence not identified · pointer only · 04a62d4701f99cb5 · report
masked_mean sh0416/clrcmd/src/clrcmd/models.py official repository ran · our draft was wrong licence not identified · pointer only · 64dbc58af5081065 · report
masked_sum sh0416/clrcmd/src/clrcmd/models.py official repository ran · our draft was wrong licence not identified · pointer only · 09bf1daaa67faf33 · report

Tasks

Contrastive LearningLanguage ModelingLanguage ModellingSTSSemantic Textual SimilaritySentenceSentence EmbeddingsSentence Similarity

Results from the paper archive 2025-07-28

No leaderboard rows for this paper in the archive.

Methods

Contrastive Learning

Report a problem or propose a change · a person checks every report against the paper or source before anything changes; decisions are listed on /corrections