Logical Reasoning

PT14 · S2 · Q12 In many languages other than English

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In many languages other than English there is a word for "mother's brother" which is different from the word for "father's brother," whereas English uses the word "uncle" for both.

Conclusion (therefore)

Speakers of languages that have fewer basic words for colors than English has must be perceptually unable to distinguish as many colors as speakers of English can distinguish.

Evidence

The number of basic words for colors varies widely from language to language.

Evaluate

The author seems to be thinking that, .

But I might be able to distinguish 10 different shades of blue, even though my simplified color language might make me call them all "blue".

Goal

We want an answer to help us argue that, , or to argue that .

12.

Which one of the following, if true, undermines the conclusion concerning words for colors?

  1. Correct

    Speakers of English are able

    Why this is right

    This shows that there's no automatic link between whether you have words for it and whether you can perceptually distinguish it. English has fewer words for "blue" than Russian has, but speakers of English can still distinguish between those two different Russian "blues" (lighter blue / darker blue). Thus, a language that has fewer colors than English would be in the same position that English speakers are compared to Russian speakers. Having fewer words apparently doesn't mean you are to distinguish fewer hues. This answer attacks the central assumption of the argument.

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

    61% picked this

  2. Almost every language distinguishes red

    No Impact

    This doesn't give us any way to argue that, "even if language X has fewer color words than language Y, that doesn't mean people who speak X can perceptually distinguish fewer colors than people who speak Y." It just says that almost all languages have a word for red.

    3% picked this

  3. Khmer uses a basic word

    Unclear Impact

    This answer isn't clearly about what people can / can't perceptually distinguish. It just sounds like Khmer has a color word that they use specifically with a fruit.

    21% picked this

  4. The word “orange” in English

    No Impact

    This doesn't give us any way to argue that, "even if language X has fewer color words than language Y, that doesn't mean people who speak X can perceptually distinguish fewer colors than people who speak Y." It just says that the word for "orange" in two languages happens to have a similar root word.

    4% picked this

  5. Most languages do not have

    Unclear Impact

    We might try to read this as, "See, author? Lots of language don't have a color word for gray even though they can perceptually distinguish gray (I mean, it is commonly found in nature)." That's a stretch, most importantly because we have an available answer in (A) that doesn't need us to make any such stretch on the answer's behalf. Here, we'd be thinking "commonly found in nature = people can perceptually distinguish that color"? But with (A), it was the more comfortable "able to distinguish between two shades = can perceptually distinguish two different colors".

    11% picked this

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