sqmusgrave wrote: ↑Wed Apr 03, 2024 9:31 am
Hi! Could someone please explain why D is wrong? I thought that if it was consistent within a community but not across communities that implied language was being shaped by some kind of social pressure (e.g. persuasion) which is why its consistent within. And it implies that it doesn't behave in some universal law like way, which is why it's not consistent across the groups, since one groups persuasion wouldn't be reaching the other groups. Can someone tell me why this is wrong? Thanks!
Hi sqmusgrave,
The question stem is asking us to strengthen the assertion that the laws of language are not like the laws of physics, because the laws depend on individual choices and can be affected by persuasion.
Answer choice (D) asserts that students are more likely to agree on grammar rules if they had very little prior instruction in correct grammar usage. From this, we can infer that students are
less likely to agree on grammar rules if they have
more instruction in correct usage. In fact, this seems to contradict the "language laws are affected by persuasion" assertion. If that was true, then wouldn't the students with a robust language education logically have an easier time agreeing on grammar rules, since they were all already persuaded to use correct grammar?
Answer choice (B), on the other hand, has that exact premise: a robust emphasis on early grammar instruction (a.k.a., strong persuasion) correlates with usage of that instruction. That is, the children who were persuaded to use language a certain way stuck to those laws. This matches the assertion in the stimulus.
Does this make sense?