PrepTest 157, Section 1, Question 9
Grammarians of the prescriptive school take it as(452 more words not shown)
The author most likely uses(15 more words not shown)
- Ademonstrate a greater(7 more words not shown)
- Brely on theory(7 more words not shown)
- Chold to their(10 more words not shown)
- Dhave no proof(15 more words not shown)
- Ehave based their(9 more words not shown)
Reading the passage
What is the supposed article of faith? After some attempts at regulation succeed, descriptivists suggest the preferred usage would have prevailed without the intervention. The author objects that this explanation has not been established. Seeing the expected result doesn't let them simply assume that the intervention contributed nothing.
Working the answers
- A
The phrase isn't praise for greater intellectual commitment. It criticizes the evidential basis of a particular response.
- B
This generalizes about how descriptivists describe language. The target is narrower: their unproven claim that successful prescriptive efforts made no causal difference. The author isn't labeling their entire approach theoretical rather than observational.
- C
The author doesn't say overwhelming evidence has already disproved their explanation. Lack of proof for a claim is different from overwhelming proof against it.
- DCorrect
The descriptivists have not shown that the favored usages would have become standard even without prescriptivists' help (paragraph 3). Calling that an article of faith identifies the unsupported assumption that regulation has no effect, even in the cases counted as successes.
- E
No study or other empirical evidence is presented and then discredited. The problem is that the causal explanation is asserted without the proof needed to establish it.
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