Reading Comprehension

PT155 · S3 · P4 · Q27 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.

27.

Which one of the following principles underlies the argument in passage B, but not that in passage A?

If different languages apply incompatible
Neither Passage
This didn't seem to come up in either passage. Perhaps the closest match, though, would be in passage A. The Spanish and German words for bridge and violin have different genders to them (that wouldn't qualify as incompatible concepts), and those gendered nouns seem to have created some different associations with the nouns bridge / violin.
10% picked this
Correct
If a speaker possesses a
Why this is right
Passage B definitely did this. It presents a study in which two cultures, whose language did not contain a precise expression for numbers three and higher, seem to possess a concept of number. The first sentence of Psg B's second paragraph crystallizes this idea: in showing that subjects with no verbal counting system (language lacks an expression) have a concept of approximate numerical magnitude, these reports support a language-independent view of our concept of number (the concept was not created by language) Passage A, meanwhile, doesn't provide any examples in which people have the concept but not the name. Instead, it provides examples in which the name of something influences the concept.
Skill tested: Principle · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.
54% picked this
If one’s language prevented one
Neither Passage
This is talking about a case in a language, like some Eskimo languages for example, have unique concepts (like 20 different words for "snow"). As an native English speaker, I don't have 20 different concepts of snow. If I am able to learn Eskimo language, then according to this principle, my native English did not prevent me from possessing this concept. If this was in either passage, it would be more in Psg A, where we were spending more time discussing whether or not a language can prevent you from having certain concepts. Psg B was more about whether your language enables you to have certain concepts or whether they are there innately even if you don't have a word for it.
8% picked this
If a concept can be
Not Quite Psg B
This seems fairly close to the notion of exact equality discussed at the end of Psg B, but the author of Psg B doesn't arrive at the interpretation that it is likely that the concept of exact quality was created by those languages. She lays out three options and doesn't pick a winner: it may have been created by the words in numerate languages ... the words may have just facilitated the concept (not fully created it) ... or the words just direct our attention to the concept (they didn't create it at all).
15% picked this
If a language obliges speakers
Neither Passage
Passage A is suggesting that language obliges us to think about certain concepts in specific ways, but it never mentions whether we obtain that concept independently of language. Passage B barely talks about language obliging us to think about a concept, although he seems to think that numerate languages oblige us to think about equality with more precision. If anything, though, psg B is saying that the language gives us the concept, refines the concept, or directs us to the concept of exact equality. He doesn't indicate that we obtain exact equality independent of language (in fact he suggests the opposite, since languages without a verbal counting system show a much looser concept of equality).
14% picked this

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