# Determining Relative Argument Specificity and Stance for Complex Argumentative Structures

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1906.11313 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.11313/

## Key facts

- Cited by 7 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 26 Jun 2019.

## Built on by (most cited first, 7 of 7)

- [Human-in-the-Loop for Data Collection: a Multi-Target Counter Narrative Dataset to Fight Online Hate Speech](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.08720/) (2021)
- [Classifying Argumentative Relations Using Logical Mechanisms and Argumentation Schemes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.07571/) (2021)
- [Scientia Potentia Est -- On the Role of Knowledge in Computational Argumentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.00281/) (2021)
- [Generating Informative Conclusions for Argumentative Texts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.01064/) (2021)
- [Putting Context in Context: the Impact of Discussion Structure on Text Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.02975/) (2024)
- [Do Language Models Think Consistently? A Study of Value Preferences Across Varying Response Lengths](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.02481/) (2025)
- [ArgBench: Benchmarking LLMs on Computational Argumentation Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.17366/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Systems for automatic argument generation and debate require the ability to (1) determine the stance of any claims employed in the argument and (2) assess the specificity of each claim relative to the argument context. Existing work on understanding claim specificity and stance, however, has been limited to the study of argumentative structures that are relatively shallow, most often consisting of a single claim that directly supports or opposes the argument thesis. In this paper, we tackle these tasks in the context of complex arguments on a diverse set of topics. In particular, our dataset consists of manually curated argument trees for 741 controversial topics covering 95,312 unique claims; lines of argument are generally of depth 2 to 6. We find that as the distance between a pair of claims increases along the argument path, determining the relative specificity of a pair of claims becomes easier and determining their relative stance becomes harder.