PrepTest 147, Section 4, Question 11
Linguist: Three of the four subfamilies of the(79 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(11 more words not shown)
- AThe Austronesian family(16 more words not shown)
- BWherever most subfamilies(18 more words not shown)
- CTaiwan is probably(9 more words not shown)
- DAustronesian-speaking peoples originated(10 more words not shown)
- EAustronesian-speaking peoples probably(9 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Does where a language is spoken today tell us where it began? Those are different questions. A language could have started on another island, spread to Taiwan, and disappeared from its original home. It could even have started somewhere else entirely. Those are possibilities, not facts we can add to the passage, but they show why the present distribution doesn't settle the history.
What we’re looking for
My first takeaway is that the linguist is arguing for Taiwan as the place where these languages originated. For a main-conclusion question, though, we need to check exactly what the linguist is trying to establish. The facts about the four subfamilies support a claim about how long the languages have been spoken in Taiwan. Does the argument stop there?
Working the answers
- A
This is the starting evidence. Three of the four subfamilies are found only among indigenous peoples in Taiwan. The linguist uses that distribution to argue about the past; the argument doesn't try to prove the distribution itself. Also, three subfamilies doesn't mean most speakers. Those are different things to count.
- B
This gives a general connection between where languages have been spoken longest and where they originated. It leaves out the particular conclusion about Taiwan and the movement of its peoples. A possible connecting rule is not the claim this argument ultimately asks us to accept.
- C
Close, but read past this claim. The linguist first uses the language evidence to conclude that Taiwan is probably the place where these languages have been spoken longest. That conclusion then supports another conclusion about where the people originated and where they went. C stops one step early.
- D
This connects a people's origin to the place where their languages have been spoken longest, without identifying that place as Taiwan or saying that the people later migrated. It describes a relationship involved in the reasoning, but misses the specific historical conclusion.
- ECorrect
Go back to the final clause: after concluding that the languages have been spoken longest in Taiwan, the linguist says that the peoples originated there and later migrated to other islands. That is the final point. Our initial focus on the origin of the languages got us close, but the argument goes one step further and makes a claim about the people.
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