Not even this is left to words, namely, that at any rate they express the mind of the speaker, since a speaker may indeed not know the things about which he speaks.

Augustine of Hippo, De Magistro, XIII 42

The reasons (motives) people may have for holding a belief are not always the same as the reasons (grounds) they will offer and accept in defense of a claim.

Frans H. van Eemeren, Reconstructing Argumentative Discourse, p. 12

How to distill an opinion

Our project aims to formalize how personal perspectives are externalized through argumentation in dialectical contexts. What we are interested in is the shape of an argument: when discourse is reconstructed in terms of argumentation structures, the communicative intent of the agents involved emerges with greater clarity.

Lean and expressive We developed a lightweight ontology capable of reconstructing argumentative structures in text from minimal annotation of premises and conclusions, leveraging the inferential power of OWL reasoners.

Formally grounded CONTRO implements the main features of ASPIC⁺, one of the most widely adopted formalisms for argumentation.

Built on design patterns We chose to build upon the perspectivisation ontology design pattern, extending it both extensionally and intensionally to support dialectical contexts.

Interoperable by design By adopting DOLCE’s Descriptions and Situations model, the ontology is domain agnostic and supports principled ontological assertions: it can be applied independently of the framework chosen to describe the domain.