Parrots: marcador discursivo concessivo (C2)

The parrot is the only animal that can quote us, and we have never quite forgiven it. What comes out of the bird is not language, since there is no syntax behind it, no proposition, nothing that could be true or false, and yet it is not mimicry in the way a recording is mimicry either, because the bird chooses its moments and repeats what has earned a reaction. It has learned, in other words, the social function of speech without any of its content, which is an unnerving thing to sit in a room with. ___, the distinction we are so anxious to defend may be thinner than we would like. A great deal of human talk is also produced for effect rather than meaning: the greeting that asks nothing, the agreement that commits to nothing, the phrase deployed because it worked last time. The bird is not doing what we do. But it may be doing what we do more often than we care to admit, and the discomfort in the room when a parrot answers a question correctly is not the discomfort of being imitated. It is the discomfort of being summarised.

Fonte: English for ALL (texto original).

Assinale a alternativa que completa corretamente a lacuna do texto.

A) Hence
B) In sum
C) That said
D) Thereupon
E) Otherwise

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Resposta correta: C

Antes da lacuna o autor defende que a fala do papagaio não é linguagem; depois dela admite que a fronteira pode ser mais tênue do que se gostaria. Esse movimento é uma concessão que relativiza o que se acabou de sustentar, função exata de That said. Hence introduziria consequência lógica, mas a segunda ideia enfraquece a primeira em vez de decorrer dela. In sum anunciaria síntese do que foi dito, e o que vem é uma ressalva nova. Thereupon marca sucessão temporal e Otherwise apresenta alternativa ou consequência de não se cumprir algo, valores ausentes no contexto.

Parrots: marcador discursivo concessivo (C2)

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