RCAAP Repository

This paper aims to discuss the argumentative course constructed by the characters from the short story "The Fila" by Murilo Rubião based on the concepts proposed by Oswald Ducrot in Theory of Argumentation in Language. In addition, we seek to study the argumentative paths used for the refutation of statements and their polyphony. The proposed analysis suggests a modification of the pedagogical practices of professionals responsible for the teaching of language and literature in the school.

Through this study, we intend to investigate the written production of some children in the initial phase of acquisition, observing its constitution and structuring, and seeking, mainly, to analyze how the construction of the argumentation, that is, of the meaning in its discourses, takes place. For this, texts of students from four classes were collected, being two first years and two first series. The texts were analyzed according to the perspective of the Argumentative Semantics of Oswald Ducrot and Marion Carel, focusing on concepts such as relation, chaining and polyphony.

In this work, an advertisement is analyzed based on the assumptions of Theory of Argumentation in Language and the Theory of Semantic Blocks (TBS), developed by Oswald Ducrot et al. Among the concepts used, we highlight the one of predication, that of internal and external argumentation, and that of linguistic paradox. The results show that the theory offers excellent tools for the linguistic description of meaning.

The purpose of this paper is to describe how meaning is constructed by lexical substitution in discourse. It is proposed to show how each discourse constructs its own meaning by means of the lexical substitution along the cohesive chain. The theoretical perspective that bases the analyzes of this work is that of Argumentative Semantics, a theory proposed by Oswald Ducrot, Jean-Claude Anscombre and, more recently, Marion Carel. This perspective is based on the principle that the primary function of language is to argue and that language does not describe the world, but it recreates it. Thus, the proposal of this study opposes functionalist approaches such as Hasan (1989), who understand that language represents the world.

This article explores the internal argumentation of the word dinosaur, based on four analyzes based on the Semantic Blocks Theory developed by Oswald Ducrot and Marion Carel. The corpus of investigation are excerpts from essays produced by students of the High School of Porto Alegre, who were asked for a text from the following statement: "When he got home, the dinosaur was still there." Looking at the productions, it is noticed that the word dinosaur assumes different meanings: animal, toy and nickname. This corroborates Ducrot's theory that language does not represent the world, but it is the speaker who puts into the discourse what he thinks of the world.

The aim of this paper is to present an analysis of an English language discourse by the Theory of Argumentation in Language (ANL) by Oswald Ducrot et al. For the accomplishment of the present work, the discourse Making a difference of a textbook of high school was chosen. For the analysis, the argumentative threads that constitute it, its units of meaning, are identified, based on concepts from the second phase of the ANL (Polyphony) and the third moment (Theory of Semantic Blocks). The paper concludes with some considerations on the construction of meaning in discourse, which is performed by the linguistic elements and is produced by a speaker to an interlocutor. This work offers theoretical subsidies for discourse studies and complements analyzes carried out in the light of other theories.

Review of GUMBRECHT, Hans U. Will my present have a future? In.: MENDES, Victor K.; ROCHA, João Cezar de Castro (Eds.). Producing Presences: branching out from Gumbrecht’s work. Dartmouth, Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, 2007. (Adamastor book series, 2). p.339-351.

Review of MENDES, Victor K.; ROCHA, João Cezar de Castro (Eds.). Producing Presences: branching out from Gumbrecht’s work. Dartmouth, Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, 2007. (Adamastor book series, 2)

Presentation of the issue Text, Enunciation and Argumentation in the language: Research

Presentation of Literature issue on Children and Juvenile Literature.

"E no meio da floresta encantada" by Maurício da Silveira Piccini.

"Poema" by Diego Petrarca.

This study investigates the initial stages of the process of writing acquisition by deaf children. Although both reading and writing processes in deaf children have been raising an increasing number of research, little has been noticed in the way by which they are taught at schools. Even though they recognize that deaf children have distinct difficulties to access oral language, several teachers insist on teaching them as if they were able to hear and without taking into account that they do not know the Portuguese Language. This way, for most deaf children learning to write, means learning another language. The adoption of the Brazilian Sign Language as well as the shift in terms of the conception of language have been generating changes in the teaching of writing to deaf children. By being exposed to the sign language while interacting with deaf people, deaf children will learn it as their first language and through it they will be able to attribute meaning to what they read and write. As for writing, it is expected that deaf children, in much the same way it happens with hearing children, once exposed to written texts, be able to elaborate hypothesis about the functioning of written language. Unlike hearing children, their hypothesis will be visuals. Based on writing materials written by deaf children of a special preschool and of a special kindergarten, the authors have concluded, in this study, that the initial stages of the process are very similar to those noticed in hearing children, although the results are different and are mainly the result of the fact that deaf children access writing through sight.

This paper presents an adaptation of Coscarelli’s model of reading (1999) to the computer’s graphic interface contexts. We conceive interfaces as texts, having both stable and predictable features built by a team of producers to a group of readers in a certain context with a certain aim. As part of an adaptation pattern of reading, we have rank some issues that may either make easy or difficult the reading of the interfaces according to the cognitive domains that operate this interaction. We believe that the understanding of these typical marks and features of the interface is made up from the ability of producing inferences, generalizations and judgments, and facilitates the transit through digital environment.

Purpose: investigate whether schoolaged children with auditory processing disorder have reading comprehension difficulties. Methods: The sample covered in this study embraces 40 children with auditory processing disorder ranging in age from 8 to 12 years. The children were examined by means of peripheral and central hearing evaluation. Later, the children were submitted to an evaluation of the reading comprehension. The statistical analysis was carried out using VARBRUL program. Results: The results indicated that a total of 23 (57%) children exhibited reading comprehension difficulties. Concerning the subprofiles, the decoding one were the most affected in children with reading comprehension difficulties. Conclusions: This study demonstrates that children with auditory processing disorder exhibit reading comprehension difficulties.

This paper aims to investigate cognitive advantages in executive functions of older bilinguals and older monolinguals’ performance at the Mini-mental State Exam and at the Simon Task. This research was carried out with 8 participants, 5 women and 3 men in the age group ranging from 75 to 86 years old, half of which are bilingual and the other part monolingual. Differences were found in MEEM scores and the results indicate there is also an advantageous distinction between bilinguals` and monolinguals` performance considering the results of the Simon Task. Such results, taken together, suggest that elderly bilingual have cognitive advantages in non-verbal tasks in comparison to elderly monolinguals. This investigation contributes with research on cognitive advantages of bilingualism in non-verbal tasks, which is a recent trend in Brazil.

The present paper investigates children who know how to read and write before elementary school. The objective is to identify and to analyse common aspects between children who acquire reading and writing before their classmates. For this, in a universe of 83 students, 11 were found with this profile, only 13,25%. Possible external and internal factors envolved in this precocity are described and analised here. They are: the acquaintance of the children with reading in family and in school; phonological awareness; and phonological immediate memory. The results are described, analysed and compared in a qualitative and quantitative way, to show common aspects between the students envolved and to indicate some ways to stimulate phonological awareness and phonological memory before elementary school. This research intends to confirm the importance, for the children, of living in a rich reading and writing surrounding.

We study the syntactic structure of the sentence in Brazilian Portuguese (BP), in its canonical order, SVO. We formulate categorial phrase structure rewrite rules of the sentence, using standard X-bar theory. We analyze complex sentences, including embedded sentences and sentences with two or more verbs (complex predicate sentences and structures with auxiliary verbs). We formulate grammar rules to describe the structure of the sentence in Portuguese and present a formal grammar for the sentences in Portuguese.

The present research was carried out with sixth grade students from a Primary School in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and aimed to investigate which signs of news superstructure frame are identified in the reading process and whether those signs are used as determiners of that specific linguistic text genre in the writing process. This allowed the assessment of degrees of linguistic awareness and the correlation made by the subjects between reading and writing processes. For that, five instruments were employed: a representative form of the frame of news article; an interview about the signs identified in the representative form; a source-text; an interview about the signs identified in the source-text frame; and the writing of a news article. The results indicated a positive correlation between the superstructure signs identified and acknowledged during the reading practice and those implemented in the writing of the news. The analysis of the subjects’ individual interviews also confirmed that the degree of linguistic awareness is a key factor in the identification of news superstructure frame.

Review of OTHERO, G. A.; MENUZZI, S. M. Lingüística Computacional: teoria & prática. São Paulo: Parábola, 2005. 126 p.