PrepTest 146, Section 4, Question 21
Hundreds of clay tablets marked in cuneiform have(447 more words not shown)
With which one of the(24 more words not shown)
- AIt could have(19 more words not shown)
- BThe sign gets(20 more words not shown)
- CThe way in(22 more words not shown)
- DThe way in(19 more words not shown)
- EThe abstract nature(22 more words not shown)
Reading the passage
What makes the circled cross mean sheep? It doesn't look like a sheep. Its representational role therefore depends on people recognizing what the symbol stands for, rather than on a necessary resemblance between mark and animal. Another unused sign could serve that role if people understood it to carry the same meaning. The particular shape isn't what makes the represented object a sheep.
Working the answers
- ACorrect
Because the sign is abstract, its significance needn't depend on this specific shape. A different available sign could represent sheep by the same kind of understood association. Unused matters because the proposed substitute wouldn't already designate something else.
- B
Sheep and metal are paired as examples of abstract signs. Nothing suggests that one gets its meaning through a radically different process from the other.
- C
The author doesn't explain the form of the sheep sign by contrasting agricultural commodities with industrial products. Both sheep and metal can be represented abstractly, so the commodity distinction doesn't supply this explanation.
- D
The early appearance of such abstract writing had long puzzled researchers. Schmandt-Besserat is offering an explanation for an existing scholarly puzzle, not initiating all scientific scrutiny of how the signs represent things.
- E
An abstract sign shows us something about representation. The account doesn't infer a great deal about political life from the sheep sign's abstract form.
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