Structural Analysis of Rebuttals to Evaluate Argumentative Interaction in Parliamentary Debates

This study introduces a structural framework for evaluating the quality of argumentative interaction in parliamentary debate. We proposed four hypotheses about rebuttal structures and defined corresponding features (Distance, Interval, Order, Rally). From a corpus of 20 English debate rounds with 1,573 ADUs and 679 rebuttal relations, we compared these features with human and LLM ratings. Regression analysisrevealedamoderatecorrelation(r=0.609),withRallyemerging as the most important predictor of interaction quality, followed by Distance and Interval, while Order showed limited explanatory power. To apply these insights in practice, we developed DebaTube, a visualization system that maps rebuttal structures to debate videos. A user study with experienced debaters confirmed that the system helps identify effective rebuttal patterns and improves exploration efficiency.