Reading ComprehensionDifficulty: Easy

PT108 S1 P4 Q26 Explanation

What is Language

A free, expert breakdown of this official LSAT Reading Comprehension question.

TopicsApplicationScience

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Passage

What it means to “explain” something in science often comes down to the application of mathematics. Some thinkers hold that mathematics is a kind of language—a systematic contrivance of signs, the criteria for the authority of which are internal coherence, elegance, and depth. The application of such a highly artificial system to as other language does, to accurately describe the functioning of some aspect of the world.

At the center of the issue of scientific knowledge can thus be found questions about the relationship between language and what it refers to. A discussion about the role played by language in the pursuit of knowledge has been going on among linguists for several decades. The debate centers around whether language things is purely a matter of agreed-upon conventions, making knowledge tenuous, relative, and inexact.

Lately the latter theory has been gaining wider acceptance. According to linguists who support this theory, the way language is used varies depending upon changes in accepted practices and theories among those who work in a particular discipline. These linguists argue that, in the pursuit of knowledge, a statement is true only process in question, to be held as true until another, more compelling analogy takes its place.

In pursuing the implications of this theory, linguists have reached the point at which they must ask: If words or sentences do not correspond in an essential way to life or to our ideas about life, then just what are they capable of telling us about the world? In science and mathematics, acquisition of scientific knowledge? But this question has yet to be significantly addressed in the sciences.

What this question is testing

Application

Your task

Pin down exactly what the question asks about the passage — a detail, the author's view, the structure, or the main point — before looking at the choices.

Common trap

Answers that restate a true detail from the passage but don't answer the specific question being asked.

Winning move

Anticipate the answer in your own words from the passage, then find the choice that matches that prediction.

Reading along? Open the full official question in LawHub — we show a fragment here and keep the reasoning in our own words.

The question
26.

Based on the passage, linguists who subscribe to the theory described in the second paragraph would hold that the statement “The ball is

Answer choices

  1. Correct80% picked this

    speakers of English have accepted that “The ball is red” applies to the particular physical

    Why this is right

    This answer is our best match for "agreed upon conventions". English speakers have accepted, they have agreed upon, the conventions of what relationship that sentence describes.

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

  2. Bad Match: inelegant synonyms7% picked this

    speakers of English do not accept that synonyms for “ball” and “red” express these

    This emphasizes the idea that a sentence is true if its alternative phrasings are less elegant. That's a poor match for, "a sentence is true if it satisfies agreed-upon conventions".

  3. Wrong POV6% picked this

    “The ball is red” corresponds essentially to every aspect of the particular physical

    This sounds like the point of view on the other side of the debate. Side 1: language corresponds in some essential way to objects and behaviors. Side 2 (ours): language is just some agreed-upon conventions.

  4. Bad Match: entity and property4% picked this

    “ball” and “red” actually refer to an entity and a

    This emphasizes the idea that a sentence is true if its words refer to an entity and a property. That's a poor match for, "a sentence is true if it satisfies agreed-upon conventions".

  5. Bad Match: mathematical concepts2% picked this

    “ball” and “red” are mathematical concepts that attempt to accurately describe some particular physical relationship

    This emphasizes the idea that a sentence is true if its words involve mathematical concepts that accurately describe some part of the world. That's a poor match for, "a sentence is true if it satisfies agreed-upon conventions".

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