Questão 56415

(UFRGS - 2018)

TEXTO PARA A PRÓXIMA QUESTÃO:

A(s) questão(ões) a seguir está(ão) relacionada(s) ao texto abaixo.

_____1_____ September 11, 2001, at 8:46 A.M., a hijacked airliner crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center in New York. At 9:03 A.M. a second plane crashed into the south tower. The resulting infernos caused the buildings to collapse, ¹the south tower after burning for an hour and two minutes, the north tower twenty-three minutes after that. ²The attacks were masterminded by Osama bin Laden in an attempt to intimidate the United States and unite Muslims for a restoration of the caliphate.

9/11, as the happenings of that day are now called, has set off debates on a vast array of topics. But I would like to explore a lesserknown debate triggered by it. Exactly how many events took place in New York on that morning _____2_____ September?

³It could be argued that the answer is one. The attacks on the two buildings were part of a single plan conceived by one man in service of a single agenda. They unfolded _____3_____ a few minutes and yards of each other, targeting the parts of a complex with a single name, design, and owner. And they launched a single chain of military and political events in their aftermath.

Or it could be argued that the answer is two. The towers were distinct collections of glass and steel separated by an expanse of space, and they were hit at different times and went out of existence at different times. The amateur video that showed the second plane ⁴closing in on the south tower as the north tower billowed with smoke makes the twoness unmistakable: while one event was frozen in the past, the other loomed in the future.

The gravity of 9/11 would seem to make this discussion frivolous to the point of impudence, a matter of mere "semantics," as we say, with its implication of ⁵splitting hairs. But the relation of language to our inner and outer worlds is a matter of intellectual fascination and real-world importance.

_____4_____ "importance" is often hard to quantify, _____5_____ this case I can put an exact value on it: 3,5 billion dollars. That was the sum in a legal dispute for the insurance payout to Larry Silverstein, the leaseholder of the World Trade Center site. Silverstein’s insurance policies stipulated a maximum reimbursement for each destructive "event." If 9/11 comprised a single event, he stood to receive 3,5 billion dollars; if two, he stood to receive 7 billion. In the trials, the attorneys disputed the applicable meaning of the term event. The lawyers for the leaseholder defined it in physical terms (two collapses); those for the insurance companies defined it in mental terms (one plot). There is nothing "mere" about semantics!

Adapted from: PINKER, Steven. The Stuff of Thought. New York: Penguin, 2007. p. 1-2.

Consider the following propostitions for rephrasing the fragment of the sentence the south tower after burning for an hour and two minutes (ref. 1)

I. the south tower lower after having been burning for an hour and two minutes

II. the south tower after it ws burning for an hour and two minutes

III. the south tower after it had been burning for an hour and two minutes

If applied to the text, which ones would be correct and keep the literal meaning?