TIARA 2.0: an interactive tool for annotating discourse structure and text improvement

Discourse structure annotation aims at analysing how discourse units (e.g. sentences or clauses) relate to each other and what roles they play in the overall discourse. Several annotation tools for discourse structure have been developed. However, they often only support specific annotation schemes, making their usage limited to new schemes. This article presents TIARA 2.0, an annotation tool for discourse structure and text improvement. Departing from our specific needs, we extend an existing tool to accommodate four levels of annotation: discourse structure, argumentative structure, sentence rearrangement and content alteration. The latter two are particularly unique compared to existing tools. TIARA is implemented on standard web technologies and can be easily customised. It deals with the visual complexity during the annotation process by systematically simplifying the layout and by offering interactive visualisation, including clutter-reducing features and dual-view display. TIARA’s text-view allows annotators to focus on the analysis of logical sequencing between sentences. The tree-view allows them to review their analysis in terms of the overall discourse structure. Apart from being an annotation tool, it is also designed to be useful for educational purposes in the teaching of argumentation; this gives it an edge over other existing tools.

Embodied Argumentation in Young Children in Kindergarten

In kindergarten, children are usually engaged with both verbal activities and non-verbal activities, often requiring the manipulation of physical objects. During technical tasks (e.g., problem solving), children can use argumentation as one of the languages of science that mediates how they interact with the surrounding world. In this paper, we focused on technical tasks in kindergarten in order to understand to what extent activities requiring the manipulation of physical objects also leave space for argumentation. The study involved 25 children engaged in three problem-solving activities requiring the manipulation of Lego® and some recycled materials. To analyze the non-verbal (embodied) side of the argumentative activities, we firstly identified the argumentative structure of each exchange involving the participants. Then, we focused on segments of “incomplete” argumentative dialogues (i.e., presenting only some elements typical of children’s argumentation) by appealing to multimodal representations (speech, gestures, and physical objects). The findings of the study showed that even apparently incomplete exchanges can have an argumentative function generated by non-verbal elements of the interactions. Investigating the role of embodied argumentation during technical tasks in kindergarten can allow teachers to recognize and further develop children’s argumentative resources.

Annotating argumentative structure in English-as-a-Foreign-Language learner essays

Argument mining (AM) aims to explain how individual argumentative discourse units (e.g. sentences or clauses) relate to each other and what roles they play in the overall argumentation. The automatic recognition of argumentative structure is attractive as it benefits various downstream tasks, such as text assessment, text generation, text improvement, and summarization. Existing studies focused on analyzing well-written texts provided by proficient authors. However, most English speakers in the world are non-native, and their texts are often poorly structured, particularly if they are still in the learning phase. Yet, there is no specific prior study on argumentative structure in non-native texts. In this article, we present the first corpus containing argumentative structure annotation for English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) essays, together with a specially designed annotation scheme. The annotated corpus resulting from this work is called “ICNALE-AS” and contains 434 essays written by EFL learners from various Asian countries. The corpus presented here is particularly useful for the education domain. On the basis of the analysis of argumentation-related problems in EFL essays, educators can formulate ways to improve them so that they more closely resemble native-level productions. Our argument annotation scheme is demonstrably stable, achieving good inter-annotator agreement and near-perfect intra-annotator agreement. We also propose a set of novel document-level agreement metrics that are able to quantify structural agreement from various argumentation aspects, thus providing a more holistic analysis of the quality of the argumentative structure annotation. The metrics are evaluated in a crowd-sourced meta-evaluation experiment, achieving moderate to good correlation with human judgments.

On the Contingency of Universalism

The paper presents different arguments against the necessity of mereological universalism. First, it argues that they are examples of a much more general argumentative structure. It then contends that some of these arguments cannot be resisted by distinguishing different variants of universalism that have been recently proposed in the literature—in contrast with recent suggestions to the contrary. Finally, it provides different ways to resist such contingentist arguments on behalf of universalists.

Presentation: Paul Ricœur, “The Question of the Colonies”

This presentation serves as an introduction to Paul Ricœur’s essay "The Question of the Colonies" (1947). The essay is contextualized in relation to other contemporary anti-colonial writings and to Ricœur’s own later philosophy. The argumentative structure of the essay is clarified, while identifying some difficulties in evaluating it today.

Presentación: Paul Ricœur, “La cuestión colonial”

This presentation serves as an introduction to Paul Ricœur’s essay "The Question of the Colonies" (1947). The essay is contextualized in relation to other contemporary anti-colonial writings and to Ricœur’s own later philosophy. The argumentative structure of the essay is clarified, while identifying some difficulties in evaluating it today.

Présentation: Paul Ricœur, “La question coloniale”

This presentation serves as an introduction to Paul Ricœur’s essay "The Question of the Colonies" (1947). The essay is contextualized in relation to other contemporary anti-colonial writings and to Ricœur’s own later philosophy. The argumentative structure of the essay is clarified, while identifying some difficulties in evaluating it today.

El concepto de hetaíros en la Carta séptima de Platón: la importancia de una compañía adecuada

In this work the topic of friendship is considered as the main subject in Plato’s Seventh Letter. Among the different terms used to refer to this conception, it is essential to understand hetaíros (“companion”) in order to make a suitable interpretation of its meaning within the letter. So I will recover the distinction made by Plato among companion-friend, companion-relative and companion-fellow to determine the use of hetaíros in the text. Through a synchronic reading I discover a double triadic structure which defines the meaning and relevance of hetaíros within the argumentative structure of the letter.

Derrida's typology: on the status of a deconstructive logic

This thesis begins with a simple question: what is the status of a theory of construction? Is such a theory itself constructed? What does this tell us about the post-structuralist or deconstructive reappropriation of research and theory? To address these questions, this thesis makes two moves. The first consists in identifying a general argumentative structure or logic of construction at work across several of Jacques Derrida's published works. The second move consists in thinking through how this logic reconfigures itself by affecting the status of theories or explanatory models. We will argue that a 'deconstructrive logic', if there is such a thing, cannot be final, fixed and atemporal. Departing from previous interpretations of Derrida's work, we will make the case that this is not simply a negative limitation: rather, it marks a commitment to a localized mode of philosophy, or thinking on the terms of a particular context.