Tigre - Wikilangs Models

Comprehensive Research Report & Full Ablation Study

📋 Repository Contents

Models & Assets

• Tokenizers (8k, 16k, 32k, 64k)
• N-gram models (2, 3, 4, 5-gram)
• Markov chains (context of 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5)
• Subword N-gram and Markov chains
• Embeddings in various sizes and dimensions (aligned and unaligned)
• Language Vocabulary
• Language Statistics

Analysis and Evaluation

• 1. Tokenizer Evaluation
• 2. N-gram Model Evaluation
• 3. Markov Chain Evaluation
• 4. Vocabulary Analysis
• 5. Word Embeddings Evaluation
• 6. Morphological Analysis (Experimental)
• 7. Summary & Recommendations
• Metrics Glossary
• Visualizations Index

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1. Tokenizer Evaluation

Results

Tokenization Examples

Key Findings

• Best Compression: 16k achieves 2.463x compression
• Lowest UNK Rate: 8k with 0.2982% unknown tokens
• Trade-off: Larger vocabularies improve compression but increase model size
• Recommendation: 32k vocabulary provides optimal balance for production use

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2. N-gram Model Evaluation

Results

Top 5 N-grams by Size

Key Findings

• Best Perplexity: 2-gram (subword) with 1,101
• Entropy Trend: Decreases with larger n-grams (more predictable)
• Coverage: Top-1000 patterns cover ~19% of corpus
• Recommendation: 4-gram or 5-gram for best predictive performance

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3. Markov Chain Evaluation

Results

Generated Text Samples (Word-based)

1. እግል ሓበሮት ወምስል ገሮቡ እንዴ አግንዐ እሉ ሐንስ ተምነዎ ምሰል ሰብ ዐድ ከአፎ ለአምሩ አማኖም ቱ
2. እት ሐበት አሰውደ ዲብ ኤስያት ወፓስፊክ 138 ብድሆ ናይ መትከባት ክም ትበጥር ገብአት አተላሌት ለሸሪጥ እሊ
3. እንዴ ከዐ እቶም አውመ እተ ጽንሖ እብል ትሰአልኩዉ አይወ ገሌ መደት ሰህ ጀነራል ተድለ ዑቅቢት ዐለ

1. ምን ገብእ አባይካ እለ ሊበል እላ ሐሊብ ጅሉጥ ኢቲበለ ተ ለትብለከ እሊ ላኪን እተ ለደረርኩም ዲቡ ዐድ
2. እት ልብል በሊስ ለገብእ እግሉ ሐዲስ አፍካር ምን ከምከሞት ላተ ይዓረፈ እት ደንጎበ ናይ እሊ ክታብ ለወሰከዩ
3. ሰበት ዐለ መዓርክ እንዴ ወዕለው ጎይላታት ድራሮም እት ልትበህል ልትህደግ እቡ እብ ምልሃዮም ልትጫፈሮ ወለአጎብሎ ዐለው ሰውረት

1. ሓምድ እድሪስ ዓዋተ ዩልዮ 196 ሓምድ እብራሂም መሐመድ ዐሊ ወዑመር ከራይ አብ ሓምድ ለትህየበ ተሕዚር አእንዴ ትቃወመው ሕነ
2. መነዘመት ምጅልስ ቅራን እተሓድ አፍሪቀ አልጃምዐ አልዐረብየ ወሐምሲተን ዳይማት አንፋር ምጅልስ አምን እግል ልቀስብ ለዐለት ሰእየት ክምሰል ፈሽለት
3. ሌጠ እንዴ ኢገብእ ዲብለ ዲብ እም ኩሉ ለዐለት መጥበዐት ልትጠበዕ ለዐለ ቱ ነፈዕ ወድ ዕትማን መን ቱ ነፈዕ

1. ቅብለት ምፍጋር ጸሓይ ሳሕል እግል ትደውሸሽ ክምቱ በሸረው ክልኢቶም ሜርሐት ወሕዳቶም እንዴ መርሐው ስስ ስዖታት እብ ድማናይ ደንበር እንዴ
2. ሜራስ አድጋማት ትግሬ ክምኩም ድግም ለትነፈ ሐት ቆሬዕ ክታብ ሜራስ አድጋማት ትግሬ ክምኩም ድግም ባርህ ወጻልም ክታብ ሜራስ አድጋማት
3. ክታብ ሜራስ አድጋማት ትግሬ ክምኩም ፋል እብ ነሃቅ አድግ ፋልመ ፋላት ለገ ብእ ምን ብዞሕ ሞላድ ለዐቀሙ ቶ ወእቡ

Generated Text Samples (Subword-based)

1. _መናታክሉሉ_ኣሳደረአግየ_
2. ት_ካር።_ግለ_ማን_ህቶምል
3. እ_ሶ_አክ_ብ_ብልብ_ወሐቆ

1. _እት_አግማን_ቀርደመ።_ወራ
2. ት_ዐለት_ልትበሀልየት_እብ_
3. ል_እቱ_እግለ_አዜመ_እግል_

1. _እግል_ትርእዩ፡'_እግል_እን
2. እግል_ልርእዩ_ከልብ_።_(ለሔ
3. ግል_“ገለድ_ፈናኔን_ወእብ_በ

1. እግል_ልፍገሮ_ልትጸዐነው_ሲኪን
2. _እግል_ወጠነ።_._._.._ወለ
3. እንዴ_ትየመመ_ለለአበጽሑ_ለነሐ

Key Findings

• Best Predictability: Context-4 (word) with 99.1% predictability
• Branching Factor: Decreases with context size (more deterministic)
• Memory Trade-off: Larger contexts require more storage (395,253 contexts)
• Recommendation: Context-3 or Context-4 for text generation

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4. Vocabulary Analysis

Statistics

Most Common Words

Least Common Words (from vocabulary)

Zipf's Law Analysis

Coverage Analysis

Key Findings

• Zipf Compliance: R²=0.9966 indicates excellent adherence to Zipf's law
• High Frequency Dominance: Top 100 words cover 34.4% of corpus
• Long Tail: 18,756 words needed for remaining 11.8% coverage

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5. Word Embeddings Evaluation

5.1 Cross-Lingual Alignment

5.2 Model Comparison

Key Findings

• Best Isotropy: mono_32d with 0.6615 (more uniform distribution)
• Semantic Density: Average pairwise similarity of 0.3922. Lower values indicate better semantic separation.
• Alignment Quality: Aligned models achieve up to 7.9% R@1 in cross-lingual retrieval.
• Recommendation: 128d aligned for best cross-lingual performance

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6. Morphological Analysis (Experimental)

6.1 Productivity & Complexity

6.2 Affix Inventory (Productive Units)

Productive Prefixes

Productive Suffixes

6.3 Bound Stems (Lexical Roots)

6.4 Affix Compatibility (Co-occurrence)

6.5 Recursive Morpheme Segmentation

6.6 Linguistic Interpretation

Automated Insight: The language Tigre shows high morphological productivity. The subword models are significantly more efficient than word models, suggesting a rich system of affixation or compounding.

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7. Summary & Recommendations

Production Recommendations

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Appendix: Metrics Glossary & Interpretation Guide

Tokenizer Metrics

Definition: The ratio of characters to tokens (chars/token). Measures how efficiently the tokenizer represents text.

Intuition: Higher compression means fewer tokens needed to represent the same text, reducing sequence lengths for downstream models. A 3x compression means ~3 characters per token on average.

What to seek: Higher is generally better for efficiency, but extremely high compression may indicate overly aggressive merging that loses morphological information.

Definition: Mean number of characters per token produced by the tokenizer.

Intuition: Reflects the granularity of tokenization. Longer tokens capture more context but may struggle with rare words; shorter tokens are more flexible but increase sequence length.

What to seek: Balance between 2-5 characters for most languages. Arabic/morphologically-rich languages may benefit from slightly longer tokens.

Definition: Percentage of tokens that map to the unknown/UNK token, indicating words the tokenizer cannot represent.

Intuition: Lower OOV means better vocabulary coverage. High OOV indicates the tokenizer encounters many unseen character sequences.

What to seek: Below 1% is excellent; below 5% is acceptable. BPE tokenizers typically achieve very low OOV due to subword fallback.

N-gram Model Metrics

Definition: Measures how "surprised" the model is by test data. Mathematically: 2^(cross-entropy). Lower values indicate better prediction.

Intuition: If perplexity is 100, the model is as uncertain as if choosing uniformly among 100 options at each step. A perplexity of 10 means effectively choosing among 10 equally likely options.

What to seek: Lower is better. Perplexity decreases with larger n-grams (more context). Values vary widely by language and corpus size.

Definition: Average information content (in bits) needed to encode the next token given the context. Related to perplexity: perplexity = 2^entropy.

Intuition: High entropy means high uncertainty/randomness; low entropy means predictable patterns. Natural language typically has entropy between 1-4 bits per character.

What to seek: Lower entropy indicates more predictable text patterns. Entropy should decrease as n-gram size increases.

Definition: Percentage of corpus occurrences explained by the top K most frequent n-grams.

Intuition: High coverage with few patterns indicates repetitive/formulaic text; low coverage suggests diverse vocabulary usage.

What to seek: Depends on use case. For language modeling, moderate coverage (40-60% with top-1000) is typical for natural text.

Markov Chain Metrics

Definition: Mean entropy across all contexts, measuring average uncertainty in next-word prediction.

Intuition: Lower entropy means the model is more confident about what comes next. Context-1 has high entropy (many possible next words); Context-4 has low entropy (few likely continuations).

What to seek: Decreasing entropy with larger context sizes. Very low entropy (<0.1) indicates highly deterministic transitions.

Definition: Average number of unique next tokens observed for each context.

Intuition: High branching = many possible continuations (flexible but uncertain); low branching = few options (predictable but potentially repetitive).

What to seek: Branching factor should decrease with context size. Values near 1.0 indicate nearly deterministic chains.

Definition: Derived metric: (1 - normalized_entropy) × 100%. Indicates how deterministic the model's predictions are.

Intuition: 100% predictability means the next word is always certain; 0% means completely random. Real text falls between these extremes.

What to seek: Higher predictability for text generation quality, but too high (>98%) may produce repetitive output.

Vocabulary & Zipf's Law Metrics

Definition: The slope of the log-log plot of word frequency vs. rank. Zipf's law predicts this should be approximately -1.

Intuition: A coefficient near -1 indicates the corpus follows natural language patterns where a few words are very common and most words are rare.

What to seek: Values between -0.8 and -1.2 indicate healthy natural language distribution. Deviations may suggest domain-specific or artificial text.

Definition: Measures how well the linear fit explains the frequency-rank relationship. Ranges from 0 to 1.

Intuition: R² near 1.0 means the data closely follows Zipf's law; lower values indicate deviation from expected word frequency patterns.

What to seek: R² > 0.95 is excellent; > 0.99 indicates near-perfect Zipf adherence typical of large natural corpora.

Definition: Cumulative percentage of corpus tokens accounted for by the top N words.

Intuition: Shows how concentrated word usage is. If top-100 words cover 50% of text, the corpus relies heavily on common words.

What to seek: Top-100 covering 30-50% is typical. Higher coverage indicates more repetitive text; lower suggests richer vocabulary.

Word Embedding Metrics

Definition: Measures how uniformly distributed vectors are in the embedding space. Computed as the ratio of minimum to maximum singular values.

Intuition: High isotropy (near 1.0) means vectors spread evenly in all directions; low isotropy means vectors cluster in certain directions, reducing expressiveness.

What to seek: Higher isotropy generally indicates better-quality embeddings. Values > 0.1 are reasonable; > 0.3 is good. Lower-dimensional embeddings tend to have higher isotropy.

Definition: Mean magnitude (L2 norm) of word vectors in the embedding space.

Intuition: Indicates the typical "length" of vectors. Consistent norms suggest stable training; high variance may indicate some words are undertrained.

What to seek: Relatively consistent norms across models. The absolute value matters less than consistency (low std deviation).

Definition: Measures angular similarity between vectors, ranging from -1 (opposite) to 1 (identical direction).

Intuition: Words with similar meanings should have high cosine similarity. This is the standard metric for semantic relatedness in embeddings.

What to seek: Semantically related words should score > 0.5; unrelated words should be near 0. Synonyms often score > 0.7.

Definition: t-Distributed Stochastic Neighbor Embedding - a dimensionality reduction technique that preserves local structure for visualization.

Intuition: Clusters in t-SNE plots indicate groups of semantically related words. Spread indicates vocabulary diversity; tight clusters suggest semantic coherence.

What to seek: Meaningful clusters (e.g., numbers together, verbs together). Avoid over-interpreting distances - t-SNE preserves local, not global, structure.

General Interpretation Guidelines

1. Compare within model families: Metrics are most meaningful when comparing models of the same type (e.g., 8k vs 64k tokenizer).
2. Consider trade-offs: Better performance on one metric often comes at the cost of another (e.g., compression vs. OOV rate).
3. Context matters: Optimal values depend on downstream tasks. Text generation may prioritize different metrics than classification.
4. Corpus influence: All metrics are influenced by corpus characteristics. Wikipedia text differs from social media or literature.
5. Language-specific patterns: Morphologically rich languages (like Arabic) may show different optimal ranges than analytic languages.

Visualizations Index

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About This Project

Data Source

Project

Maintainer

Citation

License

Links

• 🌐 Website: wikilangs.org
• 🤗 Models: huggingface.co/wikilangs
• 📊 Data: wikipedia-monthly
• 👤 Author: Omar Kamali
• 🤝 Sponsor: Featherless AI

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