An argument is a series of statements used to persuade someone of something. The first job in analyzing any argument is to identify its conclusion. One way to identify conclusions, or other parts of an argument, is to look for their indicators .
Premises are statements that directly support the conclusion.
A supporting argument is one which has as its conclusion the same statement as the premise being supported. All premises can be supported in this way, but such supporting arguments are often not stated. A special type of supporting argument is a definition , and while these, too, are usually unstated, at times it is necessary to define a term because either the term itself or the particular denotation being used is unusual. Eventually, all support for premises can be traced back to a set of beliefs which the person making the argument considers to be self-evident, and therefore not in need of further support or analysis. These may be called assumptions, presumptions, suppositions, or, in certain situations, postulates and axioms.