English entailment

Question

Hello, I like to if these sentence entail other meaning of its following,

John is an Indonesian military leader

Does it mean these too ?
John is Indonesian
John is military
John is a leader

Because for this sentence,
Marry is a smart student

The smart might only mean for her in the context of student, it does not necessary means that "Marry is smart", am I right or wrong ? Please adise me. Thank you.

Marius Hancu · Accepted Answer

1.

>Does it mean these too ?

Yes.

2. It also means "Mary is smart."

Eagerlearner · Answer

Thanks for the prompt reply, but how about

John is a former Indonesian military leader

What does it entail ? To me it does not entail anything.

Thank you.

Marius Hancu · Answer

He is still an Indonesian, as he can't change nationality easily.

He was a military person, but we're not sure if he is any more, perhaps he retired.

He was a leader, but probably isn't any more.

Eagerlearner · Answer

Thank you again. That means th word former can make the rest of the adjective become unsure ?
Because if I say
"John is a former Indonesian" means john is not longer an Indonesian
"John is a former military" means john is not longer a military
"John is a former leader" means john is not longer a leader

Compare to "John is an Indonesian military leader"

So I think it's better not to take any entailments for the sentence "John is a former Indonesian military leader", since it's unsure for the "current point" of time whether he is still an Indonesian or military or leader.

I need to analyse this precisely, because it's for a software program project. Thank you.

Marius Hancu · Answer

This is not an easy job. Your company may need to hire an expert in natural languages.

Eagerlearner · Answer

Yeah...it's truly a very very challenging job. I am not in the company though, as I am only a student(19), I have spent months researching on Natural Language Processing.

BarbaraPA · Answer

I'm moving this to the linguistics thread.

John is a former Indonesian military leader does NOT mean that he is no longer Indonesian.

Indonesian describes the type of military (it's the Indonesial military), and together they describe what type of leader. I agree with MH: He is no longer a leader.

Leader is the only true noun in the phrase. The others all work to modify that noun. The "former" applies to the noun.

If the former needed to apply to the noun-serving-as-adjectively, it would "formerly."

This is his beautiful home.
This is his former beautiful home. -- He no longer lives there. It's still beautiful.
This is his formerly beautiful home. -- He lives there, but it's no longer beautiful.

Eagerlearner · Answer

Wow...your explaination is awesome, I got it now. I am confused because of the word "former", to me it means the past, so it does not apply to the current time.

So the "former" apply the same for past tense "was" too ?
"Suharto was an Indonesian military leader"

Another one,
"Suharto was the second president of Indonesia"

"second" and "Indonesia" modifies the noun "president" ?

and, "second" is what type of adjective ? e.g "positional", "size" or what ?
Because it does not entail like
"Suharto was the second"

Thank you very much.

Kooyeen · Answer

EagerlearnerI need to analyse this precisely, because it's for a software program project. Thank you.

I don't want to disappoint you... but I really do NOT believe machines can understand human languages. They are too complicated. You'll have to wait for artificial intelligence.
A little example:
I only need a couple of oranges... (...not all those!)
I only need a couple of oranges... (...I don't need all that fruit!)

That "only" refers to two different things ("couple" in the first, "oranges" in the second). Those two sentences have different intonation. The pitch and volume change differently, since the words to stress are different. But those two sentences look the same!
So your machine won't even be able to understand what "only" refers to in such simple and basic sentences. Unless...
- your software is going to analyze intonation too (= splitting sentences in words, analyzing vowels, frequences, accents, tone of voice...

)
- your software is going to analize the context (= understanding the meaning of words and sentences...

)

That is not possible now. Wait for artificial intelligence.
And sorry that I can't help you.

Eagerlearner · Answer

Thanks for the advice, I think you are talking about the ambiguities of natural language processing. Yes, since the very first day I did my research that was the very first thing I encountered. Ambiguity is the most challenging stuff for NLP, here is also another famous one in NLP.

"Time flies like an arrow"
"John saw the astronomer with a telescope" (Who has the telescope ?)

What I have done so far is, at first the sentence will be tagged word by word with part-of-speech using Hidden Markov Model, then it will be assign with category called Combinatory Categorial Grammar(CCG), finally it will be converted into formal logical form which is only understood by computer. I guess it's already artificial intelligence. But it still not able to deal with ambiguity yet. I would let you use my system when I have the foundation done. Since it's a website application.

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