Maybe, but I'm not sure how much the style is deliberate vs. a consequence of the post-training tasks like summarization and problem solving. Without seeing the post-training tasks and rating systems it's hard to judge if it's a deliberate style or an emergent consequence of other things.
But it's definitely the case that base models sound more human than instruction-tuned variants. And the shift isn't just vocabulary, it's also in grammar and rhetorical style. There's a shift toward longer words, but also participial phrases, phrasal coordination (with "and" and "or"), and nominalizations (turning adjectives/adverbs into nouns, like "development" or "naturalness"). https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.16107
How is "development" an adverb or adjective turned into a noun??
It comes from a French word (développement) and that in turns was just a natural derivation of the verb "développer"... no adverbs or adjectives (English or otherwise) seem to come into play here
Sorry, I should have said adjectives or verbs, as it's "develop" turned into a noun. Just like "discernment" or "punishment". The etymology isn't relevant for classifying it as a nominalization, only the grammatical function.
But it's definitely the case that base models sound more human than instruction-tuned variants. And the shift isn't just vocabulary, it's also in grammar and rhetorical style. There's a shift toward longer words, but also participial phrases, phrasal coordination (with "and" and "or"), and nominalizations (turning adjectives/adverbs into nouns, like "development" or "naturalness"). https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.16107