PrepTest 101, Section 3, Question 4
M: The Greek alphabet must have been invented(80 more words not shown)
P's argument is vulnerable to(6 more words not shown)
- AIt fails to(15 more words not shown)
- BIt incorrectly assumes(12 more words not shown)
- CIt confuses the(13 more words not shown)
- DIt attempts to(13 more words not shown)
- EIt overlooks the(19 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
“No one else could read it”—yet. Why assume the inventor would keep the alphabet to themselves?
M says the purpose was to preserve the poems. P answers that the person who already knew them wouldn't need to read them, and no one else could read the new alphabet. But imagine that person writing down a poem and then teaching a child how to read it. The child could now learn a poem the inventor already knew. The inventor's existing knowledge wouldn't make that project pointless; it would help make the project possible.
M's hypothesis may still need evidence. Showing a possible reason someone would invent an alphabet doesn't prove that this is what happened. But P is trying to dismiss that hypothesis because the writing supposedly couldn't have an audience. The possibility of teaching other readers is enough to expose a hole in that dismissal.
What we’re looking for
For the flaw, I'd look for the assumption that the new alphabet would be usable only by its inventor. P overlooks the possibility that spreading the ability to read was part of the plan from the beginning.
Working the answers
- A
Whether Phoenician alone could provide the basis for Greek is not the issue P raises. P could accept that the alphabet was technically possible and still ask why anyone would invent it for this purpose. Failing to demonstrate the relationship between the two writing systems doesn't identify the mistake in P's objection about readers.
- B
P's reasoning doesn't require a Homeric poem to have been the first Greek text. Even if the inventor wrote a short note before writing an epic, P could still make the same claim that the inventor didn't need to read the poem and nobody else could. The order of the first texts doesn't address the overlooked future readers.
- C
P doesn't confuse what makes an oral tradition complex with what a written language requires. The objection concerns who could use the proposed written poems. We don't get competing sets of requirements that P mixes up. We get an assumption that other people won't be able to learn the new system.
- D
P tries to reject the hypothesis, not establish its truth. Nor does P reason that a possible explanation must be the actual one. Our teaching example shows a possibility P failed to consider; it doesn't make M's account historically certain. Keep those two tasks separate.
- ECorrect
Teaching the alphabet would give the written poems readers besides their creator. An inventor could already know the poems and still want to preserve them for people who would learn to read later. P's claim that there would be no point depends on overlooking that plan. E supplies the possibility that directly answers P's supposed lack of an audience.
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