Reading Comprehension

PT104 · S3 · P2 · Q13 Hopi Personal Names

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Personal names are generally regarded by European thinkers in two major ways, both of which deny that names have any significant semantic content.

Central Topic / Purpose

significance of Hopi Names / Clarify Misconception (or Highlight Something Overlooked)

Main Point

Unlike Mill's point of view (that names are meaningless) or Strauss's (that names confer social rank), the correct view of Hopi names is that they were extremely meaningful things that not only helped to indicate social relationships but also provided aesthetic delight because of their poetic beauty or significance.

Passage Map

P1 - Introduce other views on function of names before pivoting into Passage's focus: Hopi Names.

P2 - Background information on when and how Hopis receive names

P3 - Elaboration on naming process, illuminated by an example, culminating in a takeway that the names are like tiny poems

P4 - Author's summary of Hopi names, showing how neither of the views on function in names from P1 are adequate in describing Hopi names.

Other Commentary

In trying to solve the passage from the 1st paragraph, there are a few foreshadowing hints: 1st sentence:

The fact that there are two views on how to regard personal names would prompt us to think, .

The wording that "X is generally thought of as Y" foreshadows a Clarify a Misconception / Highlight Something Overlooked type passage.

When we see the 3rd sentence say, "Consequently, X has been neglected", we would think, .

In this sense, we could see the passage as a Illustrate by Example, in which the discussion of Hopi names is just the example used to illustrate the broader point that some societies use names for functions that go beyond what our two guys enumerated in the 2nd sentence.

13.

It can be inferred from the passage that each of the following features of Hopi personal names contributes to their poetic quality EXCEPT:

  1. their ability to be understood

    Supported

    Second sentence of the last paragraph.

    16% picked this

  2. their use of condensed imagery

    Supported

    Last sentence of the 3rd paragraph.

    5% picked this

  3. their capacity to produce aesthetic

    Supported

    Second sentence of the last paragraph.

    5% picked this

  4. Correct

    their ability to confer identity

    Why this is right

    This is Mill's characterization of names (second sentence of the 1st paragraph), and he certainly doesn't think names have a poetic (or any other semantic) quality.

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

    53% picked this

  5. their ability to subtly convey

    Supported

    This is more gist-y than expressed in verbatim, but the first sentence of the 3rd paragraph would probably qualify. Everything in the third paragraph leads into the final description of "tiny imagist poems". The fact that there is more to the story than the literal translation is a quality we often associate with poetry (the literal translation might mean one thing, but the symbolism or contextual associations are part of the poetic meaning).

    20% picked this

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