Text Summarization using Formal Argumentation

Current approaches to text summarization are not genuinely interested in how competent readers perform the task often by re-constructing the arguments in the text then arriving at the summary from conclusions of acceptable arguments. This paper aims to mimic this natural path using formal argumentation techniques. Assuming the availability Argumentative Discourse Unit (ADU) graph of the given text, we build structured argumentation frameworks called S-ASPIC+ and ABA representing the text. Then we use ABA proof procedures to re-construct arguments in the text and evaluate their acceptabilities. Finally, we aggregate the conclusions of acceptable arguments. We demonstrate our approach using a dataset of argumentative micro-texts and report the results, describing comparisons to other methods.