A method for automatically extracting claim candidates from complex sentences includes providing a parse tree of a text sample to be analyzed, disassembling the parse tree into a set of basic meaning-bearing clauses, assembling clauses of the set of basic clauses into a set of complex coherent statements based on permissible syntactic structures, testing the complex statements and discarding those statements that are not coherent when considered alone, discarding those complex statements that either do not provide additional information about a subject, or are too complex, removing information from a complex statement that provides supportive details about the subject, and discarding statements that restrict their subject, so that the subject cannot be generalized encompass a broader subject.