Reading Comprehension

PT155 · S3 · P4 · Q23 Language & Thought

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Passage A In 1940, Benjamin Lee Whorf seduced a whole generation into believing that our mother tongue restricts what we are able to think.

Topic

How language influences thought—specifically, the relationship between language and conceptual understanding (e.g., perception, gender, numbers).

Framework

Present Debate (both passages present evidence and arguments about how language impacts cognition, engaging with Whorfian and non-Whorfian perspectives)

Main Point

While early claims suggested that language restricts what we can think (Whorfian hypothesis), more recent evidence shows that language shapes, but does not entirely determine, how we perceive and categorize the world—especially in terms of objects’ gender (Passage A) and understanding of numbers (Passage B). - The Most Valuable Sentence for Passage A: End of P2: - The Most Valuable Sentence for Passage B: End of P2:

P1 (Passage A): The Origins and Issues with Whorf's Hypothesis

Whorf claimed that our language limits our thoughts and that speakers of different languages inhabit different realities, but later it turned out there was no strong evidence for this.

P2 (Passage A): Rethinking the Influence of Language

Today, research suggests that language doesn’t prevent certain thoughts, but rather forces us to pay attention to specific things, like gender distinctions in German.

P3 (Passage A): Language Shapes Associations and Perceptions

Grammatical gender can influence our sense of what objects are like: studies showed that German and Spanish speakers attribute different qualities to objects based on whether those objects are masculine or feminine in their language.

23.

Both passages are concerned with answering which one of the following questions?

Are there limits to the
Out of Scope: translation
Neither passage is spending any time wondering whether one language can be translated into another. The closest we come to talking about multiple languages is in comparing the sort of thoughts imposed by German vs. Spanish.
3% picked this
Correct
What does scientific research reveal
Why this is right
"The relation between language and thought" is what we were looking for. The 'scientific research' part at the front is somewhat surprising, but can we make it work? For Passage A, definitely. The first sentence of the 2nd paragraph says, "new research suggests that in reality its influence consists in what it obliges us to think about". The following two sentences begin "For example" and "Furthermore", showing us that we are unpacking takeaways from this new research. For Passage B, the very first sentence is saying, "Studies ... give evidence regarding the role of language in the development of numerical reasoning (i.e. mathematical thought)." So both passages are discussing the connection between language and thought, by referencing scientific research. Thus, we can make this answer work.
Skill tested: Main Point · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.
63% picked this
Do differences among languages result
Reverse Causality
This answer would be beautifully perfect if it just said "cause" instead of "result from". The authors were analyzing whether differences among languages cause different ways of thinking about the world? If we got this one wrong by reading too fast, we might need to remind ourselves that when an answer feels pretty perfect, we should still give it a 2nd read, as though it's wrong, reading word-by-word to see if there's anything objectionable, before we pick it. Yes, sometimes correct answers really are easy and obvious, but there are enough mean traps where a "perfectly" written answer is one word off and fools 25% or more of us.
23% picked this
Were Whorf’s claims about language
Out of Scope: better than thought
There's no comparison in either passage between "how good we thought Whorf's evidence was" vs. "how good we think it is now". Passage A tells us a past tense story about people learning that there was never actually any evidence to support Whorf's views. And the new research presented by passage A does not support Whorf's claims, so we wouldn't call that better evidence than previously thought. Passage B doesn't mention the evidence for Whorf's claims at all.
4% picked this
Is the influence of language
Too Strong: confined to
Passage A mentioned some examples in which one's language influences one's perception of the gender of objects. Passage B mentioned some examples in which one's language influences one's sense of number and equivalence. But neither author was in the ballpark of asking, "Are the only two ways that language affects thought number and gender?"
7% picked this

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