**On the Limits of Output Control in Chat-Trained Language Models: An Empirical Study of Ternary Logic Enforcement via System-Level Constraints**

**On the Limits of Output Control in Chat-Trained Language Models: An Empirical Study of Ternary Logic Enforcement via System-Level Constraints** | Authorea try { document.documentElement.classList.add('js'); } catch (e) { } var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'G-8VDV14Y67G']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); Skip to main content Preprints Collections Wiley Open Research IET Open Research Ecological Society of Japan All Collections About About Authorea FAQs Contact Us Quick Search anywhere Search for preprint articles, keywords, etc. Search Search ADVANCED SEARCH SCROLL This is a preprint and has not been peer reviewed. Data may be preliminary. 7 January 2026 V1 Latest version Share on **On the Limits of Output Control in Chat-Trained Language Models: An Empirical Study of Ternary Logic Enforcement via System-Level Constraints** Author : Trent Slade 0009-0002-4515-9237 [email protected] Authors Info & Affiliations https://doi.org/10.22541/au.176780582.22642997/v1 84 views 72 downloads Contents Abstract Supplementary Material Information & Authors Metrics & Citations View Options References Figures Tables Media Share Abstract This paper presents an empirical investigation into the feasibility of enforcing strict, nonconversational output behavior in a chat-trained large language model (LLM) using only systemlevel configuration mechanisms (Modelfiles) and prompt design. Motivated by the desire to construct a deterministic ternary logic evaluator, we progressively constrained a chat-tuned LLaMA-family model using increasingly strict semantic, syntactic, and output-format rules. Despite successfully eliminating reasoning errors, instructional behavior, symbolic elaboration, and code generation, the model persistently emitted conversational framing around otherwise correct classification outputs. We demonstrate that this behavior is invariant under temperature reduction, output alphabet restriction, sentinel token schemes, and prompt grammar hardening. The results indicate a fundamental limitation: decoder-level conversational priors introduced during instruction tuning cannot be fully overridden through system-level prompts or configuration, absent runtimelevel termination control. This constitutes a hard boundary between model-internal alignment and runtime-level control, with important implications for classifier construction, evaluation pipelines, and claims about prompt-level determinism in chat-trained LLMs. Supplementary Material File (limitsofoutputcontrol_llms.pdf) Download 236.47 KB Information & Authors Information Version history V1 Version 1 07 January 2026 Copyright This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License Keywords chat-trained models large language models negative results output control prompt engineering Authors Affiliations Trent Slade 0009-0002-4515-9237 [email protected] QSOL-IMC View all articles by this author Metrics & Citations Metrics Article Usage 84 views 72 downloads .FvxKWukQNSOunydq8rnd { width: 100px; } Citations Download citation Trent Slade. **On the Limits of Output Control in Chat-Trained Language Models: An Empirical Study of Ternary Logic Enforcement via System-Level Constraints**. Authorea . 07 January 2026. DOI: https://doi.org/10.22541/au.176780582.22642997/v1 If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download. For more information or tips please see 'Downloading to a citation manager' in the Help menu . Format Please select one from the list RIS (ProCite, Reference Manager) EndNote BibTex Medlars RefWorks Direct import Tips for downloading citations document.getElementById('citMgrHelpLink').addEventListener('click', function() { popupHelp(this.href); return false; }); $(".js__slcInclude").on("change", function(e){ if ($(this).val() == 'refworks') $('#direct').prop("checked", false); $('#direct').prop("disabled", ($(this).val() == 'refworks')); }); View Options View options PDF View PDF Figures Tables Media Share Share Share article link Copy Link Copied! Copying failed. 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