Modeling informal debates

  • Authors:
  • Rachel Reichaan

  • Affiliations:
  • Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc., Harvard University

  • Venue:
  • IJCAI'81 Proceedings of the 7th international joint conference on Artificial intelligence - Volume 1
  • Year:
  • 1981

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Abstract

Many rules of formal debate are well documented, of common knowledge, and "looked-up" in preparation for planned debating. Informal debates, on the other hand, are highly dynamic, are complex, and are spontaneously generated with no prior rule-book preparation. They too, however, are rule-governed. In this paper I present an abstract process model capable of modeling "well" formed" argument structures that occur in ordinary conversations. The formalization rests on a general theorettical framework for discourse engagement encapsulated in a discourse ATN grammar. A major feature of the system is its segmentation of discourse utterances into functionally related context spaces.