Hopi Personal Names

Answer choices

1. A

   Wrong Paragraph12% picked this

   present reasons why Hopi personal names can be treated as

   This is playing off the last sentence of the first paragraph, but the second paragraph didn't seem to offer any reasons we should call these names poetic compositions. That's what the third paragraph does.

   12%
2. B

   Wrong Paragraph33% picked this

   support the claim that Hopi personal names make reference to events in

   Again, this seems to better describe the third paragraph, where the framing idea at its beginning is "more often, the name giver has in mind a specific event ..." There is nothing in paragraph two about events in the recipient's life, just the recipient's characteristics and the totem animal of the recipient's clan.

   33%
3. C

   Not Opinionated7% picked this

   argue that the fact that Hopis receive many names throughout life refutes European

   The second paragraph isn't making an argument against anything and certainly isn't trying to refute anyone. It's just neutrally providing information about when and how Hopi names are given. Overall, the author would refute the idea that "names do not have any significant semantic content". She would say in the case of Hopi names, they do have significant semantic content. However, they don't have semantic content because Hopi's receive many names throughout life. They have semantic content because they refer to historical or ritual events, they deal with personal characteristics of the person being named, they contain the totem animal for that person's clan, and they often have a specific event in mind.

   7%
4. D

   Correct46% picked this

   illustrate ways in which Hopi personal names may have

   Why this is right

   This is the answer via elimination, but certainly not any wording I would predict. We wouldn't be able to infer this purpose from what is said within paragraph 2, so this is more of a test of our overall understanding of the Passage Map and how paragraph 2 fits into the broader context. The first paragraph introduces European thinkers who think that names have no semantic content. Then the author pivots into talking about other types of names, often overlooked, where names do have interesting functions and meanings (meaning = semantic content). The author then brings up the Hopi, as one such example of a society in which names had semantic content. The contents of paragraph 2 are just some neutral descriptive facts about how and when Hopi names are given, but within that there is some ammunition for saying that Hopi names have meaning. After all, the final example gives us a name that reflects the child's size and the animal of the clan they belong to. Because this answer sounds more like something the reader could infer from paragraph 2, and less likely something the author was explicitly doing, I would re-read (C), since it was the only other answer that wasn't fishing language from paragraph 3. But (C) is definitely off, because the proof of semantic content is not that Hopi receive several names throughout their life. It's all the stuff that follows that sentence.

   Skill tested: Paragraph Purpose · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.

   46%
5. E

   Wrong Paragraph2% picked this

   demonstrate that the literal translation of Hopi personal names often obscures

   Again, we have an answer that seems to describe the 3rd paragraph. To be fair, it would be too strong for the 3rd paragraph (the author isn't ever saying that literal translation often obscures true meaning). But she does say in the first sentence of paragraph 3 that often the name has something not captured in a literal translation. To obscure something, to me, sounds like actively hiding. This sounds more like the name just doesn't obviously betray its full significance. Either way, we're talking 3rd paragraph, and this question was asking us about 2nd paragraph.

   2%