Banihashemi, Bita2013-02-282013-02-282008-0320050028http://bspace.buid.ac.ae/handle/1234/50DISSERTATION WITH DISTINCTIONIn this thesis,I present an OWL ontology for describing arguments and argument schemes. Following the same key principles of the World Wide Argument Web (WWAW) for building a large-scale Web of structured and inter-connected arguments, this ontology provides an infrastructure for mass argumentation support on the Web.First, I describe the OWL ontology which is based on a new reification of the Argument Interchange Format (AIF) and structures arguments according to Walton’s theory of argumentation schemes. Then, I demonstrate how this ontology enables the use of automated Description Logic reasoning over argument structures. In particular, OWL reasoning enables significantly enhanced querying of arguments through automatic scheme classifications, instance classification, inference of indirect support in chained argument structures and inference of critical questions. Finally, I present the implementation of a Web-based system for authoring and querying argument structures in RDF which utilizes the proposed OWL ontology.enargumentsontologyautomated description logicDissertation