# _VivesDebate_: A New Annotated Multilingual Corpus of Argumentation in a Debate Tournament
## 3 Annotation Methodology
### Segmentation of Debates in Argumentative Discourse Units (ADUs)  
The next task consisted of segmenting the text into ADUs (**ADU** tag) and annotating it, identifying: (a) the participant who uttered the ADU and the part of the debate in which it was used (i.e., in the introduction, argumentation or conclusion) by means of the **PHASE** tag; (b) their stance towards the topic of the debate (against or in favour) annotated with the **STANCE** tag; and the number of the argument presented during the argumentation part tagged as **ARGUMENT_NUMBER** (the identified arguments are labelled with a numerical value from 1 to the maximum number of arguments found in the debate) (see Section 2 and Figure 2 for more information). The preparatory part of the debate, in which the topic and the stance each team had to adopt were decided, and the conclusions were not segmented. An Argumentative Discourse Unit (ADU) is defined as the minimal unit of analysis containing argumentative information [25]. Therefore, an argument can consist of one or more ADUs, each contributing a different (or complementary) argumentative function (e.g., premises, pieces of evidence, claims). Two general criteria were applied to the segmentation of ADUs: the first is that ADUs are created following the chronological order in which they appear in the discourse. Each ADU was assigned a unique **ID** tag for identifying them and showing their position in the chronological sequence. The second criterion is related to the quality of ADUs, which means that their content has to be clear, comprehensible and coherent. Therefore, this involves a further revision and, if necessary, a correction of the text. Each ADU corresponds to a transcribed text segment considered as a unit of argumentation and was included in the **ADU** tag. The ADUs are generally equivalent to a sentence or a dependent clause (for instance a subordinated or coordinated clause). It is worth noting that we also found ADUs which contained a subsegment that was, in turn, another ADU (for instance, relative clauses, as we will see below). In this case, the second ADU was also assigned its own ID and ADU tags. The specific criteria followed for the segmentation of ADUs were the following:  
* Punctuation marks must not be added to the content of the ADUs. The annotators could view the debate recording to solve ambiguous interpretations and avoid a misinterpretation of the message. * Anaphoric references are left as they are, there is no need to reconstruct them, that is, the antecedent of the anaphora is not retrieved. 1. [(es una forma d'explotacio de la **dona**)]_ADU1_ [es una forma de cosificar-**la**]_ADU2_ [i es una forma que fa que vulneri la **seva** dignitat]_ADU3_ 2. [it is a way of exploiting **women**]_ADU1_ [it is a way of objetifying **then**]_ADU2_ [and it is a way of violating **their** dignity]_ADU3_ In example (1), the text contains three different ADUs and two anaphoric elements appear in the second and third ADUs, '-la/her' in ADU2 and'seva/her' in ADU3, which refer to the same entity ('dona/woman'), but we did not retrieve their antecedent in the corresponding ADUs. * Discourse markers (2) must be removed from the content of the ADUs, but the discourse connectors (3) will be kept. Discourse connectors are relevant because they introduce propositions indicating cause, consequence, conditional relations, purpose, contrast, opposition, objection, and so forth, whereas discourse markers are used to introduce a topic to order, to emphasize, to exemplify, to conclude,and so forth.