PrepTest 136, Section 4, Question 26
Anthropologist: Many people think that if human language(103 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(10 more words not shown)
- AHumans did not(9 more words not shown)
- BThe assumption that(20 more words not shown)
- CThe communicative systems(7 more words not shown)
- DHuman language is(8 more words not shown)
- EThe evolution of(17 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
A close relative is not necessarily an ancestor. That distinction matters to the argument about chimpanzees and language.
I can understand the initial thought: if language developed gradually, perhaps earlier species in the human line had a cruder version of it. But those earlier species might be extinct. The existence of an earlier form of language somewhere in our ancestry would not establish that a species alive today has it.
Picture a family tree with two branches growing from a common ancestor. One branch leads to humans, the other to chimpanzees. Language could have begun developing on the human branch after that shared ancestor disappeared. If so, the gradual-development story would tell us nothing definite about whether chimpanzees have anything similar.
What we’re looking for
The anthropologist is not proving that chimpanzees lack language. The point is that the proposed evolutionary reasoning does not establish that they must have it. For the main-conclusion question, keep that limitation intact. The facts about common ancestry support the rejection of the inference; they are not the final point themselves.
Working the answers
- A
This is part of the explanation for why the popular inference fails. Humans did not evolve from chimpanzees, so a claim about human ancestors cannot automatically be applied to chimpanzees. That supports the conclusion about what follows concerning language, but A leaves out that conclusion.
- BCorrect
Translate the wording: even if earlier human ancestors had something like language, that does not tell us that chimpanzees must have it. 'No clearcut linguistic implications' means the assumption does not settle the question about chimpanzee language. This captures the anthropologist's main point without claiming to have proved that chimpanzees lack language altogether.
- C
This states an actual comparison between chimpanzee communication and human language. The anthropologist does not establish how sophisticated chimpanzee communication is. The argument challenges what we may infer from shared ancestry; it does not supply a description of chimpanzees' communicative systems.
- D
The passage does not identify human intelligence as the cause of language or claim that chimpanzees lack that intelligence. Those are new ideas. The reasoning concerns the branches of an evolutionary history, not a demonstrated link between intelligence and language.
- E
This turns a possibility into an established historical fact. The anthropologist says language might have begun after the common ancestor's extinction. That possible sequence is enough to challenge the claim that chimpanzees must have something like human language. The author does not need to prove, and does not claim to prove, that this is the sequence that actually occurred.
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