TREITEL@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA (03/14/84)
From: Richard Treitel <TREITEL@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA>
My father, who is a law professor, was able to come up with an instance where a
contract contained the word "and" in a certain place, and the court interpreted
that "and" to mean what we computermen would have meant by "or". Or maybe it
was the other way around; I forget the details.
- RichardJ.R.Cowie%rco@ucl-cs.arpa (04/05/84)
There is another way of looking at the statement - all customers in Indiana and Ohio which seems simpler to me than producing the new phrase - all customers in Indiana AND all customers in Ohio instead of doing this why not treat Indiana and Ohio as a new single conceptual entity giving - all customers in (Indiana and Ohio). This seems simpler to me. It would mean the database would have to allow aggregations of this type, but I don't see that as being particularly problematic. Have I missed some subtle point here? Jim Cowie.
japlaice@watrose.UUCP (John A. Plaice) (04/11/84)
There are several philosophical problems with treating `Indiana and Ohio' as a single entity. The first is that the Fregean idea that the sense of a sentence is based on the sense of its parts, which is thought valid by most philosophers, no longer holds true. The second is that if we use that idea in this situation, then it would probably seem reasonable to use Quine's ideas for adjectives, namely that `unicorn', `hairy unicorn', `small, hairy unicorn' (or other similar examples) are all separate entities, and I think that it is obvious that trying to derive a reasonabnle semantic/syntactic theory for any reasonable fragment of English would become virtually imposible.
emma@uw-june (Joe Pfeiffer) (04/12/84)
Seeing this solution in front of me, it is immediately trivially obvious, and a much more natural translation of the phrase. Now why didn't I think of that? Just by the way, it seems intriguing to me that the phrase (Indiana and Ohio) really means (Indiana or Ohio). Looks like some contextual information is still needed to parse this one correctly... -Joe P.
bbanerje@sjuvax.UUCP (B. Banerjee) (04/13/84)
>> There is another way of looking at the statement - >> all customers in Indiana and Ohio >> which seems simpler to me than producing the new phrase - >> all customers in Indiana AND all customers in Ohio >> instead of doing this why not treat Indiana and Ohio as a new single >> conceptual entity giving - >> all customers in (Indiana and Ohio). >> >> This seems simpler to me. It would mean the database would have to >> allow aggregations of this type, but I don't see that as being >> particularly problematic. >> >> Jim Cowie. My admittedly inconsequential contribution to this. all customers in Indiana AND all customers in Ohio seems to want the following : (Pardon the Notation!) [all customers such that | {customer C- Indiana} XOR {customer C- Ohio} ] This seems to be described best as [all customers such that | customer C- {Indiana U Ohio - (Indiana (~) Ohio)} ] Assuming that no customer can be in Indiana and Ohio simultaneously, the intersection of the sets would be NULL. Thus we would have [all customers such that | customer C- {Indiana U Ohio} ] Here, Indiana and Ohio correspond to sets of base type customer. C- denotes set membership and (~) is intended to denote set intersection. So far so good. However, the normal sense of an AND as I understand it, corresponds to a set intersection. The formulation is therefore counter-intutive. I'm not an AI type, so I would appreciate being set straight. Flames will be cheerfully ignored. Regards, -- Binayak Banerjee {allegra | astrovax | bpa | burdvax}!sjuvax!bbanerje
marcel@uiucdcs.UUCP (04/16/84)
#R:sri-arpa:-55100:uiucdcs:32300023:000:1646 uiucdcs!marcel Apr 16 11:12:00 1984 >>From watrose!japlaice >> There are several philosophical problems with treating >> `Indiana and Ohio' as a single entity. >> The first is that the Fregean idea that the sense of a sentence >> is based on the sense of its parts, which is thought valid by most >> philosophers, no longer holds true. >> The second is that ... `unicorn', `hairy unicorn', `small, >> hairy unicorn' ... are all separate entities ... On the contrary, the sense of "Indiana and Ohio" is still based on the senses of "Indiana", "and" and "Ohio", if only we disambiguate "and". The ambiguity of conjunction is well-known: the same word represents both a set operator and a logical operator (among others). Which set operator? The formula X in ({A} ANDset {B}) <= (X in {A}) ANDlog (X in {B}) allows ANDset to be either intersection or union. It is only our computational bias that leads us to confuse the set with the logical operator. The formula X in ({A} ANDset {B}) <=> (X in {A}) ANDlog (X in {B}) forces ANDset to be an intersector. But we need only distinguish ANDset and ANDlog to preserve Fregean compositionality; for that, it's immaterial which ANDset we adopt. In any case, Bertrand Russell's 1908 theory of descriptions (as I read it) seems to refute strict compositionality (words are meaningless in isolation -- they acquire meaning in context). Secondly, I don't recall Quine saying that `unicorn', `hairy unicorn', `small, hairy unicorn' should all be indistinguishable. They may have the same referent without having the same meaning. Marcel Schoppers U of Illinois @ Urbana-Champaign { ihnp4 | pur-ee } ! uiucdcs ! marcel
howard@metheus.UUCP (Howard A. Landman) (04/20/84)
The "Indiana & Ohio" problem can be explained by a feature of human language processing which goes on all the time, although we are not often conciously aware of it. I refer, of course, to the rejection of contradictory, unlikely, or impossible interpretations. The reason we interpret "all customers in Indiana and Ohio" to mean "all customers in Indiana and *all customers in* Ohio" is that the seemingly logical interpretation is contradictory and cannot possibly refer to any customers (regardless of what is in the database). It is interesting to note in this connection that some oriental forms of logic require that a pair of examples be given for each set of things to be described, one of an thing in the set, the other of an thing out of the set. This prevents wasting time with arguments based on the null set, like "All purple cows made out of neutrinos can fly; all animals that can fly have wings; therefore all purple cows made out of neutrinos have wings". An example syllogism: "Where there is smoke, there is fire. Here, there is smoke: like in a kitchen, unlike in a lake. Therefore, here there is fire." This rejection is extremely sophisticated, and includes, for example, infinite loop detection. An example: how many people would take the obvious "logical" interpretation of the instructions "Lather. Rinse. Repeat." to be the correct one? We all automatically read this as "Lather. Rinse. Repeat the previous two instructions once." because the other reading doesn't make physical sense. How many people ever had to THINK about that, consciously, at all? Also, it is customary to be able to be able to delete redundant or implied information from a sentence. Since the three words between stars above are somewhat redundant, and can be deleted without affected the only reasonable interpretation of the phrase, it should be O.K. to delete them. Just more fat on the fire (my, how it sizzle!) from: Howard A. Landman ogcvax!metheus!howard
TREITEL@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA (04/21/84)
From: Richard Treitel <TREITEL@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA>
Come on, folks. When someone says "my brothers and sisters" they do not mean
the intersection of the two sets. Aside from its legal meaning of "or" which
I mentioned earlier, the English word "and" has at least two more meanings:
logical conjunction, and straight addition (which means union when applied to
sets). Though I'm willing to be contradicted, I believe that English usage
prefers to intersect predicates rather than sets. Namely, "tall and fat
people" can mean people who are both tall and fat (intersection), but "tall
people and fat people" means both the set of people who are tall and the set of
people who are fat (union).
- RichardKIRK.TYM@OFFICE-2.ARPA (04/25/84)
From: Kirk Kelley <KIRK.TYM@OFFICE-2.ARPA> Hmmm, perhaps a friendly retrieval expert should accept statements from the user like "Dont tell ME how to think!", deduce that there is some ambiguity of interpretation over the meaning of a request, and ask for explicit disambiguation of the troublesome operators after each future request, until the user decides to pick and live with a single unambiguous interpretation. -- kirk
colonel@gloria.UUCP (05/04/84)
[Does two pair of straights beat a flush house?] "Don't tell ME how to think" from a "friendly" system? This is bending the definition of friendly. It recalls the Poker System's notorious EASY-IN: welcome to easy-in. do you want instructions? NO don't say no, just type a command. "Many 'user-friendly' systems are really user-contemptuous." -- Col. G. L. Sicherman ...seismo!rochester!rocksvax!sunybcs!gloria!colonel
toma@fluke.UUCP (05/04/84)
The use of "and" in speech really is an example of an implicit disambiguating rule people apply, rather than a contradiction resolution. "And" used in conversation is not the same as "and" used in logic theory, where logicians have appropriated the word from common usage and attached an unambigous meaning to it. In doing so, they had to throw out all the other meanings encountered in common usage. When one refers to "people living in Transylvania and Iceland", one is using "and" in the sense of implying a union of two sets. Usage of "and" as set intersection is another commonly encountered meaning, as in "throw out all the cats that are red and have eaten already." This ambiguous usage of "and" is foisted on us by the common usage of "or", which usually denotes mutual exclusion, but can be used to imply inclusion (especially by logicians). Tom Anderson John Fluke Mfg. Everett, Wa.
ags@pucc-i (Seaman) (05/18/84)
We are blinded by everyday usage into putting an interpretation on "people in Indiana and Ohio" that really isn't there. That phrase should logically refer to 1. The PEOPLE of Indiana, and 2. The STATE of Ohio (but not the people). If someone queries a program about "people in Indiana and Ohio", a reasonable response by the program might be to ask, "Do you mean people in Indiana and IN Ohio?" which may lead eventually to the result "There are no people in Indiana and in Ohio." -- Dave Seaman ..!pur-ee!pucc-i:ags "Against people who give vent to their loquacity by extraneous bombastic circumlocution."
brennan@iuvax.UUCP (05/20/84)
Come on, Dave, I think you missed the point. No person would have any trouble at all understanding "people in Indiana and Ohio", so why should a natural language parser have trouble with it??? JD Brennan ...!ihnp4!inuxc!iuvax!brennan (USENET) Brennan@Indiana (CSNET) Brennan.Indiana@CSnet-Relay (ARPA)
dep@allegra.UUCP (Dewayne E. Perry) (05/21/84)
Why does everyone assume that there is no one who is both in Indiana and Ohio? The border is rather long and it seem perfectly possible that from time to time there are people with one foot in Inidana and the other in Ohio - or for that matter, undoubtedly someone sleeps with his head in I and feet in O (or vice versa). Lets hear it for the stately ambiguous!
debray@sbcs.UUCP (05/24/84)
> No person would have any trouble at all understanding "people > in Indiana and Ohio", so why should a natural language parser > have trouble with it??? The problem is that the English word "and" is used in many different ways, e.g.: 1) "The people in Indiana and Ohio" -- refers to the union of the set of people in Indiana, and the set of people in Ohio. Could conceivably be rewritten as "the people in Indiana and the people in Ohio". The arguments to "and" can be reordered, i.e. it refers to the same set as "the people in Ohio and Indiana". 2) "The house on 55th Street and 7th Avenue" -- refers to the *intersection* of the set of houses on 55th street and the set of houses on 7th Avenue (hopefully, a singleton set!). NOT the same as "the house on 55th. street and the house on 7th. Avenue". The arguments to "and" *CAN* be reordered, however, i.e. one could as well say, "the house on 7th. Ave. and 55th Street". 3) "You can log on to the computer and post an article to the net" -- refers to a temporal order of events: login, THEN post to the net. Again, not the same as "you can log on to the computer and you can post an article to the net". Unlike (2) above, the meaning changes if the arguments to "and" are reordered. 4) "John aced Physics and Math" -- refers to logical conjunction. Differs from (2) in that it can also be rewritten as "John aced Physics and John aced Math". &c. People know how to parse these different uses of "and" correctly due to a wealth of semantic knowledge. For example, knowledge about computers (that articles cannot be posted to the net without logging onto a computer) enables us to determine that the "and" in (3) above refers to a temporal ordering of events. Without such semantic information, your English parser'll probably get into trouble. -- Saumya Debray, SUNY at Stony Brook uucp: {cbosgd, decvax, ihnp4, mcvax, cmcl2}!philabs \ {amd70, akgua, decwrl, utzoo}!allegra > !sbcs!debray {teklabs, hp-pcd, metheus}!ogcvax / CSNet: debray@suny-sbcs@CSNet-Relay