Argumentation meets Natural Language Processing: results achieved and open challenges

old_uid14629
titleArgumentation meets Natural Language Processing: results achieved and open challenges
start_date2014/11/14
schedule11h-12h30
onlineno
summaryIn this talk we will present existing approaches coupling Argumentation Theory and Natural Language Processing, and then we will present our contributions in that area, highlighting the remaining open challenges. In order to cut in on a debate on the web, the participants need first to evaluate the opinions of the other users to detect whether they are in favor or against the debated issue. Bipolar argumentation proposes algorithms and semantics to evaluate the set of accepted arguments, given the support and the attack relations among them. Two main problems arise. First, an automated framework to detect the relations among the arguments represented by the natural language formulation of the users’ opinions is needed. Our talk addresses this open issue by proposing and evaluating the use of natural language techniques to identify the arguments and their relations. In particular, we adopt the textual entailment approach, a generic framework for applied semantics, where linguistic objects are mapped by means of semantic inferences at a textual level. Textual entailment is then coupled together with an abstract bipolar argumentation system which allows to identify the arguments that are accepted in the considered online debate. Second, we address the problem of studying and comparing the different proposals put forward for modeling the support relation. The emerging scenario shows that there is not a unique interpretation of the support relation. In particular, different combinations of additional attacks among the arguments involved in a support relation are proposed. We provide a natural language account of the notion of support based on online debates, by discussing and evaluating the support relation among arguments with respect to the more specific notion of textual entailment in the natural language processing field.
responsiblesCandito