Preference Optimization Improves Definition Generation: Semantic Change in EU Institutional Sustainable Finance Disclosures

Dictionary-like definition generators are known to be useful for lexical semantic change detection (LSCD). However, they suffer from overly granular sense distribution, producing excessive number of definitions for one and the same lexical sense. In this work, we show that fine-tuning with Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) helps to overcome this problem. We test our approach both quantitatively on a curated academic LSCD benchmark and qualitatively on real-world data for a practical task of auditing diachronic changes in sustainability terminology within project documentation of EU development finance. All models, code and predictions produced in this study are publicly available at https://github.com/ltgoslo/dpo-for-definition-generation.