Argumentative discourse is characterized by the flow of message consisting of propositions which are hierarchically linked through logical inferencing. They can be represented as rhetorical structures involving facts and opinions usually labeled, for example, as premises, conditions, deductions and conclusions, etc. Linearly concatenated propositions in the source text are frequently marked off by punctuation marks or overt language specific markers. Drawing on previous successful experience in text generation based on inference trees, this paper presents an approach for capturing the flow of argumentation by a reverse process: going from syntactic to rhetorical structural and then to inference tree. It attempts to show that beginning with derived conclusions, an appropriate abstract may be generated by utilizing the inference tree to generate abstracts with differential coverage of the details of the underlying argumentation.
议论文体的特色，在于通过逻辑推理，将作者想要传递的信息，用多层次互相结合的各个命题表达出来。在语言的表层结构上，这个推理过程，会使用包含各种事实或意见的修辞关系表达出来，例如前提，条件，推导及结论等等。基于语言的本质，这个多层次的推理结构，在篇章中只能表示为直线串联起来的各个命题，再用标点符号和具有特定功能的语法标记，标志出各命题相互之间的层次关系。###本研究提出一个篇章处理的方法，可以用来分析及获知一片议论文的篇章结构，及其论证的过程。这个处理方法经由对篇章进行语法及修辞结构的分析，最终推导出作者推论时所依据的推理法则 [及推理树]。其中修辞结构的分析，主要是基于对语法标记功能的辨别。###这个篇章处理方法其中一个重要的应用，就是自动化中文篇章摘要。通过一连串的实例，本文论证了如何利用篇章处理后得到的推理树来生成涵盖原文不同细节，或详或简的多个摘要。用户可根据实际需要，指定所想看的摘要的长度，从而达到篇章摘要系统的主要目标。