Q18 - In many families

by **smiller** Fri Nov 10, 2017 9:59 am

Question Type:
Necessary Assumption

Stimulus Breakdown:
Premise: In families where no one speaks to babies in simplified language, children master the grammatical structure of their language as quickly as other children.
Conclusion: Constantly speaking to children in simplified language does not help them learn a language.

Answer Anticipation:
There are a couple of shifts in the language of the argument. The premise is about mastering the grammatical structure of language. The conclusion Is more broadly about learning a language. The argument assumes that if one masters the grammatical structure of a language, one has learned a language.

And while some children might be able to learn language without being spoken to in simplified language, it's still be possible that speaking in simplified language does help other children.

Correct answer:
(C)

Answer choice analysis:
(A) Out of Scope. We don't have to assume that babies pay no extra attention to simplified language. They might pay extra attention to it with or without learning language from it.

(B) Out of Scope. We don't have to assume that speaking in simplified language would impair learning. The conclusion only claims that simplified language doesn't help.

(C) Correct: This matches our prediction: if a child has learned the grammatical structure of a language, the child has learned the language.

(D) Opposite function: If anything, this seems to undermine the argument. It's actually irrelevant, though. We don't have to assume anything about what linguists believe to be true.

(E) Reversal: This gives us the reverse of choice (C). It states that if one learns a language then one has learned the grammatical structure. This answer also adds learning vocabulary as a requirement for learning language, meaning that grammatical structure alone isn't sufficient to learn a language.

Takeaway/Pattern:
Like Sufficient Assumption questions, Necessary Assumption questions often contain a term shift: the conclusion contains a new concept that is related to a concept in the premise, but we don't know that the truth of one guarantees the truth of the other.

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