Scientific Argumentation Detection as Limited-domain Intention Recognition

We describe the task of intention-based text understanding for scientific argumentation. The model of scientific argumentation presented here is based on the recognition of 28 concrete rhetorical moves in text. These moves can in turn be associated with higherlevel intentions. The intentions we aim to model operate in the limited domain of scientific argumentation and justification; it is the limitation of the domain which makes our intentions predictable and enumerable, unlike general intentions. We explain how rhetorical moves relate to higher-level intentions. We also discuss work in progress towards a corpus annotated with limited-domain intentions, and speculate about the design of an automatic recognition system, for which many components already exist today.