Grammatical clues of argumentation

Abstract

The aim of this work is to track down the syntactic-semantic grammatical phenomena present in textual productions of Basic Education students (Projeto PIBID Português 2/UFPR). The central questions are the following: Which grammatical aspects evidence argumentatively vague texts, without the saying purpose (POSSENTI, 2012)? And which of them evidence the argumentatively consistent and valid texts? We analyze opinion texts, made by students from the 6th year of Elementary School II to the 3rd year of High School, and we find that what differentiates the texts is a generic or vague (MÜLLER, 2003) semantics and an empty argument structure syntax (RAPOSO, 1992), in detriment of a specific semantics and syntactically controlled argument structures. In this sense, syntactic-semantic constructs, rather than meaning-effect resources, effectively become the grammatical clues of argumentation.