Lexical Reference Frames: Interpreting LM Residual Streams in Native Semantics

Abstract

The vocabulary of a language model is its native semantics, and the embedding and unembedding fix the meaning of a state at the two ends of the residual stream. Between them, existing methods reuse a fixed lens or treat states as a point cloud, and neither reads a state as the model does. We argue that every hidden state has a native reference frame, induced by the layers that remain and adaptive to the context. Lexical reference frames approximate it in a model-native and context-aware way, reading a state through the remaining layers with a given number of rounds of attention between positions and a typical attention output for the rest, fitting nothing to the model's output. No lens with fixed directions per layer can reach a mean cosine with the native frame's lexical readouts above the square root of their coherence, 0.30 and 0.35 at mid-depth of SmolLM3-3B and OLMo3-7B. LexFrame[1], of order 1, reaches 0.97 and 0.97, and its readings are on average within 0.16 and 0.15 nats of the model's output. Its coefficient differences attribute predictions more faithfully than attribution patching, and its lexical basis steers predictions while sparing other tokens. On average, its readings settle on the model's top token over the final 0.82 and 0.81 of the layers, those of lenses over at most 0.11. These frames thus make every hidden state readable, attributable and steerable.