PrepTest 107, Section 1, Question 16
We can learn about the living conditions of(50 more words not shown)
Which one of the following,(7 more words not shown)
- AA word meaning(9 more words not shown)
- BSome languages lack(10 more words not shown)
- CThere are no(9 more words not shown)
- DProto-Indo-European possesses words(2 more words not shown)
- EThe people who(4 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
I can see why these words would be clues. People living around snow and wolves might have words for them, and a missing word for 'sea' might suggest life far inland.
But how dependable are those clues? Someone can know a word without personally encountering what it describes. I've never needed to see a great white shark to learn its name. Travelers could similarly bring stories of winter or wolves to people who hadn't experienced them locally.
We can question the missing word too. What if the speakers encountered the sea but didn't have a distinct word for it? Or what if their vocabulary described related features instead? Those are possibilities to investigate. The argument treats the presence and absence of particular words as evidence of the speakers' surroundings, so we should ask how reliably vocabulary tracks those surroundings.
What we’re looking for
The question asks us to weaken the conclusion that the speakers lived in a cold place isolated from oceans or seas. I'd look for a reason the vocabulary could be as described even if that picture of their home were mistaken.
Working the answers
- A
Fish don't have to come from the sea. Rivers, lakes, and ponds can contain fish too, including in cold inland regions. This looks promising if we're searching for a sea-related word, but it doesn't actually connect the speakers to a sea. It fits the author's proposed setting perfectly well.
- BCorrect
A prominent feature can be part of a people's environment even when their language lacks a word for it. That gives us a reason to hesitate before inferring isolation from the sea merely from the missing word.
B doesn't establish where these particular speakers lived. It weakens the general connection the author relies on: if languages can omit words for features their speakers encounter, this omission is less reliable evidence that the sea was absent from their surroundings.
- C
This tells us about languages known today, not where the speakers of this earlier language lived. It might make the missing word seem unusual, but it doesn't show that the author's geographical inference is wrong. We still need to know what that omission indicates about their environment.
- D
People in a cold climate can still experience heat, including from a fire or warmer weather. A word for heat therefore doesn't conflict with living in a cold inland region. The existence of the word is not evidence that their climate was generally hot.
- E
Moving from place to place doesn't tell us which places people reach. They could move around within a cold inland region and never approach the sea. We'd need information about their travels, not merely the fact that they were nomadic.
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