Abstract Argumentation with Subargument Relations

Dung's abstract argumentation framework characterises argument acceptability solely via an attack relation, deliberately abstracting from the internal structure of arguments. While this level of abstraction has enabled a rich body of results, it limits the ability to represent structural dependencies that are central in many structured argumentation formalisms, in particular subargument relations. Existing extensions, including bipolar argumentation frameworks, introduce support relations, but these do not capture the asymmetric and constitutive nature of subarguments or their interaction with attacks. In this paper, we study abstract argumentation frameworks enriched with an explicit subargument relation, treated alongside attack as a basic relation. We analyse how subargument relations interact with attacks and examine their impact on fundamental semantic properties. This framework provides a principled abstraction of structural information and clarifies the role of subarguments in abstract acceptability reasoning.

• Publication year

  2026

• Venue

  arXiv.org

• Publication date

  2026-01-17

• Fields of study

  Computer Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.48550/arXiv.2601.12038arXiv 2601.12038
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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