---
title: "Modeling Informal Debates"
authors:
  - "Rachel Reichman"
doi: ""
url: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1981/5"
pdf: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1981/0005.pdf"
venue: "Proceedings of the Seventh International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence"
year: 1981
pages: "19-23"
track: "Natural Language"
keywords:
---

# Modeling Informal Debates

Rachel Reichman

*Proceedings of the Seventh International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence*, pages 19-23.

## 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 witn no prior rule-book preparation. Tiley too, however, are rule-governed. In this paper I present an abstract process model capable of modeling •wellformed• argument structures that occur in ordinary conversations. The formalization rests on a general theoretical framework for discourse eng~ement encapsulated in a discourse ATN grammar. A ma or feature of the srstem is its segmentation of d scourse utterances nto functionally related context spaces.