PrepTest 135, Section 2, Question 7
Gotera: Infants lack the motor ability required to(52 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(7 more words not shown)
- ASpeech acquisition is(13 more words not shown)
- BDuring the entire(13 more words not shown)
- CThe initial babbling(5 more words not shown)
- DThe initial babbling(10 more words not shown)
- EControl of tongue(10 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Learning to make the sounds is part of learning to speak. Why should it be the whole process?
Think of a child who has trouble pronouncing a particular sound. Getting the tongue and mouth to make that sound deliberately can take practice. Gotera's evidence makes that physical difficulty understandable: infants babble randomly before they can voluntarily produce the sounds of their language.
But could speech acquisition involve more than that? A child might also have to learn what sounds mean or how to use them to communicate. Showing a need for control over the mouth doesn't rule out an additional mental task. The word 'entirely' is where Gotera goes beyond the evidence.
What we’re looking for
The necessary-assumption question asks what the argument needs us to accept. It needs speech acquisition to depend only on the ability to produce the sounds. If there's a separate abstract or mental component, the evidence about motor development cannot establish that the entire process is motor control.
Working the answers
- ACorrect
This limits speech acquisition to the ability to produce spoken sounds. That is the restriction Gotera relies on when moving from evidence about producing sounds to a conclusion about the whole acquisition process. If acquiring speech also required something beyond that ability, Gotera would have left that additional requirement unexplained.
- B
Being unable to produce a particular sound deliberately doesn't mean being unable to move the tongue deliberately at all. An infant could control some movement without making the precise, coordinated movement a sound requires. Gotera doesn't need to rule out every intentional tongue movement during babbling.
- C
The argument doesn't need the babbling stage to end at a particular age. Whether that stage finishes during infancy or later doesn't settle whether acquiring speech involves only motor control.
- D
Babbling needn't be the very first stage. There could be an earlier stage, and Gotera could still claim that the process is entirely about motor development. This extra claim about the order of stages isn't needed to connect the evidence to the conclusion.
- E
This adds a requirement for sophisticated mental development. That doesn't defend Gotera's claim that the process is motor rather than abstract or mental; it puts pressure on that distinction. The argument needs to exclude an additional mental component, not establish one.
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