Argumentation Mining in User-Generated Web Discourse

The goal of argumentation mining, an evolving research field in computational linguistics, is to design methods capable of analyzing people's argumentation. In this article, we go beyond the state of the art in several ways. (i) We deal with actual Web data and take up the challenges given by the variety of registers, multiple domains, and unrestricted noisy user-generated Web discourse. (ii) We bridge the gap between normative argumentation theories and argumentation phenomena encountered in actual data by adapting an argumentation model tested in an extensive annotation study. (iii) We create a new gold standard corpus (90k tokens in 340 documents) and experiment with several machine learning methods to identify argument components. We offer the data, source codes, and annotation guidelines to the community under free licenses. Our findings show that argumentation mining in user-generated Web discourse is a feasible but challenging task.Comment: Cite as: Habernal, I. & Gurevych, I. (2017). Argumentation Mining in User-Generated Web Discourse. Computational Linguistics 43(1), pp. 125-17

Parsing Argumentation Structures in Persuasive Essays

In this article, we present a novel approach for parsing argumentation structures. We identify argument components using sequence labeling at the token level and apply a new joint model for detecting argumentation structures. The proposed model globally optimizes argument component types and argumentative relations using integer linear programming. We show that our model considerably improves the performance of base classifiers and significantly outperforms challenging heuristic baselines. Moreover, we introduce a novel corpus of persuasive essays annotated with argumentation structures. We show that our annotation scheme and annotation guidelines successfully guide human annotators to substantial agreement. This corpus and the annotation guidelines are freely available for ensuring reproducibility and to encourage future research in computational argumentation.Comment: Under review in Computational Linguistics. First submission: 26 October 2015. Revised submission: 15 July 201

Prolific domains and the left periphery

The left periphery has enjoyed extensive study over the past years, especially drawn against the framework of Rizzi (1997). It is argued that in this part of the clause, relations are licensed that have direct impact on discourse interpretation and information structure, such as topic, focus, clause type, and the like. I take this line of research up and argue in favour of a split CP on the basis of strictly left-peripheral phenomena across languages. But I also want to link the relation of articulated clause structure, syntactic derivations, and information structure. In particular, I outline the basics of a model of syntactic derivation that makes explicit reference to the interpretive interfaces in a cyclic, dynamic manner. I suggest a return to older stages of generative grammar, at least in spirit, by proposing that clausal derivation stretches over three important areas which I call prolific domains: the part of the clause which licenses argument/thematic relations (V- or θ-domain), the part that licenses agreement/grammatica1 relations (T- or ϕ-domain), and the part that licenses discourse/information-relevant relations (C- or ω-domain). It is thus a rather broad and conceptual notion of "adding" and "omitting" that I am concerned with here, namely licensing of material to relate to information structure, and the desire to find an answer to the question which elements might be added or omitted across languages to establish such links

Papers on predicative constructions : Proceedings of the workshop on secundary predication, October 16-17, 2000, Berlin

This volume presents a collection of papers touching on various issues concerning the syntax and semantics of predicative constructions. A hot topic in the study of predicative copula constructions, with direct implications for the treatment of he (how many he's do we need?), and wider implications for the theories of predication, event-based semantics and aspect, is the nature and source of the situation argument. Closer examination of copula-less predications is becoming increasingly relevant to all these issues, as is clearly illustrated by the present collection

Conflict, Claim and Contradiction in the New Indigenous State of Bolivia

Recent conflict between indigenous people and a self-styled indigenous state in Bolivia has brought to the fore some of the paradoxes and contradictions within the concept of indigeneity itself. The contemporary politics of state sponsored indigeneity in Bolivia has as much capacity to create new inequalities as it does to address old ones and there is a conceptual deficit in understanding contemporary indigenous rights claims, in particular, as they relate to the state. I reject Peter Geschiere?s (2009) suggestion that one should distinguish between ?autochthony? and ?indigeneity? but am inspired by these arguments to suggest that one needs to make a critical distinction between the kinds of claims different indigenous people make against the state. Of interest here are the consequences of indigeneity being transformed from being a language of resistance to a language of governance. I propose a conceptual distinction between inclusive national indigeneity for the majority which seeks to co-opt the state through accessing the language of governance and a minority concept of indigeneity which needs protection from the state and continues to use indigeneity as a language of resistance. Only by looking at the kinds of claims people make through the rhetoric of indigeneity can we make sense of the current indigenous conflict in Bolivia and elsewhere

Focus marking in Kikuyu

Im Kikuyu, einer in Kenia gesprochenen Bantusprache, wird Fokus systematisch durch Wortstellung markiert. In dieser Arbeit werden die verschiedenen Varianten der Markierung von Fokus in Frage-Antwortsequenzen dargestellt. Nach einem Überblick über in der Literatur vorhandene Diskussionen des Phänomens wird auf der Grundlage von mit einem Muttersprachler erhobenen Daten eine syntaktische Analyse von Fokuskonstruktionen mit der Partikel ne vorgeschlagen. Ferner werden neue Daten zur Fokussierung verschiedener Satzteile, z.B. der VP, des ganzen Satzes und des Wahrheitswerts, präsentiert. Ziel der Arbeit ist somit, die deskriptive Datenbasis zu Fokuskonstruktionen im Kikuyu zu erweitern und einen theoretischen Beitrag zu ihrer Analyse im Rahmen der generativen Grammatik zu liefern. Die Arbeit wurde im Sommer 2003 als Magisterarbeit an der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Institut für deutsche Sprache und Linguistik, angenommen.In Kikuyu, a Bantu language spoken in Kenya, focus is marked systematically by means of word order. In this study, the different possibilities for marking focus in question answer sequences are presented. After an overview of the discussions of the phenomenon in the literature, a syntactic account for focus constructions with the particle ne is proposed. This account is based on original data that was gathered with a native speaker. In addition, new data on focusing different parts of the sentence, e.g. the VP, the entire sentence, or the truth-value, are presented. The aim of this study thus is to broaden the descriptive basis for focus constructions in Kikuyu and to provide a theoretical contribution to their analysis in the framework of generative grammar