Certain minor peculiarities of language

Answer choices

1. A

   No Impact8% picked this

   The labor of analyzing peculiarities of language both in the work of a known poet and in a poem of unknown authorship would not

   This choice is talking about cases in which we wouldn't bother to execute this Plan. That's irrelevant to our goal, which is to show a case where we DO execute the Plan but don't achieve the Goal.

   8%
2. B

   No Impact20% picked this

   A peculiarity of language that might be used as an identifying mark is likely to be widely scattered in the work of a poet,

   This has more to do with False Negatives. We might find an unnamed poem that really is by Poet X, but since it doesn't contain one of Poet X's telltale idiosyncrasies, we don't match it up with X (this doesn't show the plan breaking down, though, because it's not like we would match it up with some other poet. We need an answer that would provide a False Positive, where we think this unnamed poem is by Poet X, even though it really isn't).

   20%
3. C

   Correct59% picked this

   A peculiarity of language in a poem of unknown authorship could be evidence either that the poem was written by the one author known

   Why this is right

   As the background of the paragraph explains, sometimes a peculiarity / idiosyncrasy is something common to the times (as auto-tuned vocals became, once Kanye popularized them). So if we find a poem that has quality A, and previously we'd only seen that quality in the work of Poet X, it could mean that the poem was written by Poet X, but it could also mean that Poet Y wrote the poem, and quality A was one of those peculiarities that was shared by multiple poets of a given era.

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

   59%
4. D

   No Impact4% picked this

   Minor peculiarities of language contribute far less to the literary effect of any poem than such factors as poetic form, subject

   We don't care whether the peculiarities contribute to the literary effect of a poem. We're only concerned with whether they provide us with a reliable way to judge who authored the poem.

   4%
5. E

   No Impact10% picked this

   A poet’s use of some peculiarities of language might have been unconscious in some poems and conscious in other poems, and the two uses

   We don't care whether the peculiarities where consciously or unconsciously included in a work. We're only concerned with whether they provide us with a reliable way to judge who authored the poem.

   10%