#17 - Being articulate has been equated with having a large

[Nicholas Noyes]

Hi egarcia193,

To your overarching question,

Is there any advice for understanding a stimulus that just doesn't seem to make sense what they are saying or what they are asking you to do?

My response is--diagram! Keep your eye out for wording that could be diagrammed out as conditional reasoning. If you've translated everything correctly into your diagrams, then you can go back to look at those even if you didn't understand what you read. Looking at the shorthand version can often give you clarity.

In this particular question, we have the following conditional reasoning:


(p1) being articulate large vocabulary ("Being articulate has been equated with having a large vocabulary.")

(p2) large vocabulary incentive for self-expression when words are inadequate ("Actually, however, people with larger vocabularies have no incentive for, and tend not to engage in the kind of creative linguistic self expression that is required when no available words seem adequate.")

Conclusion: large vocabulary truly articulate ("Thus a large vocabulary is a hindrance to using language in a truly articulate way.")


This is an assumption question, and what we need is something to link to the new term "truly articulate" in the conclusion. Answer (A) does this. (A) states "When people are truly articulate, they have the capacity to express themselves in situations in which their vocabularies seem inadequate," or--

(3) truly articulate incentive for self-expression when words are inadequate

And if you take the contrapositive--

incentive for self-expression when words are inadequate truly articulate

then it becomes clear why (3) is an assumption that is necessary to add after (2) to allow the conclusion to follow.

So I just want to clarify, By taking the contrapositive of (ANSWER A) the chain of conditional reasoning can be continued and allow us to "complete the chain" and know that...large vocabulary not truly articulate ("Thus a large vocabulary is a hindrance to using language in a truly articulate way.")

[KelseyWoods]

Hi Nicholas!

Correct! the contrapositive of answer choice (A) allows you to complete the conditional chain to get to the conclusion.

Premise: large vocabulary incentive for self-expression when words are inadequate

Conclusion: large vocabulary truly articulate

Contrapositive of answer choice (A): incentive for self-expression when words are inadequate truly articulate

That connects the premise to the conclusion:

large vocabulary incentive for self-expression when words are inadequate truly articulate

Hope this helps!

Best,
Kelsey

[Nicholas Noyes]

Thank you Kelsey, it makes sense! I just need to keep drilling on my conditional reasoning.....

[Melkor94]

Having read the explanations, I get the logic behind why the correct answer is correct but I don't see how the necessary condition of A is the negation of the necessary condition in the second sentence of stimulus.

For ease of view:
Necessary condition second sentence: [They] have no incentive for, and tend not to engage in, the kind of creative linguistive self-expression~
Necessary condition of (A): They have the capacity to express themselves~

This negation is necessary in order to get to the contrapositive of B -> C (given that the premise is A->B and conclusion is A->C), which is basically answer choice (A).

The place that confuses me is how "no incentive, and tend not to engage in" can be negated to be "capacity". Can't you still not have an incentive to do smth or have the tendency to not engage with smth while STILL having the capacity to do so?

[Luke Haqq]

Hi Melkor94!

As I understand having "capacity" for X in this context, it seems synonymous with "being possible to do" X. Understood in this way, answer choice (A) is saying, "When people are truly articulate, [it is possible for them] to express themselves in situations in which their vocabularies seem inadequate." Or:

Articulate Can express when vocab is inadequate

Stated differently using the contrapositive,

Can express when vocab is inadequate Articulate

That is, if it is not the case that people can express themselves when their vocabularies seem inadequate, then those people are not articulate. I think you rightly point out I could have made this clearer in my earlier explanation.

For the missing assumption, we need something that includes the new element of being "truly articulate," a variable that only occurs in the conclusion. Answer choice (A) is the only one that does this. In addition, answer choice (A) connects this new variable to the element from the premise in the previous sentence, namely, it connects this to being able to express when no words are adequate.

[drewwellnitz]

Hello! I was stuck between A and E and used the negation technique to ultimately select E incorrectly. Could you help me better understand the negation technique using this question?

As I understand it, necessary assumption questions can be diagrammed as Conclusion --> Assumption. However, when using the negation technique, it becomes NOT Assumption --> NOT Conclusion.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the conclusion is the last sentence, "Thus a large vocabulary is a hindrance to using language in a truly articulate way." Then, when negating answer choice A, I get: When people are truly articulate, they DO NOT have the capacity to express themselves in situations in which their vocabularies seem inadequate. ---> Thus a large vocabulary is NOT a hindrance to using language in a truly articulate way

This negation doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me (maybe I am missing something). However, the alternative (answer choice E) does make more sense: In unfamiliar situations, even people with large vocabularies often DO have specifically suitable words available. --- > Thus a large vocabulary is NOT a hindrance to using language in a truly articulate way.

Thank you in advance for any help you can provide!

[Amber Thomas]

Hi drewwellnitz!

You're right that our conclusion is the last sentence of the stimulus: "a large vocabulary is a hindrance to using language in a truly articulate way."

So, we can diagram Answer Choice A as:
Large vocabulary is a hinderance to being truly articulate --> If one is truly articulate, they can express themselves in situations where their vocabularies seem inadequate.

I think the source of your confusion is the way in which you're negating the assumption. We wouldn't negate it as "when people are truly articulate, they DO NOT have the capacity to express themselves in situations where their vocabularies seem inadequate." Instead, we would just take the statement as a whole as false, rather than negating only the second half of the statement.

We can visualize this as: "NOT(when people are truly articulate, they can express themselves in situations where their vocabularies seem inadequate)", or "it is NOT TRUE that when when people are truly articulate, they can express themselves in situations where their vocabularies seem inadequate."

So, our negation would read:
NOT(when people are truly articulate, they can express themselves in situations where their vocabularies seem inadequate) --> NOT(large vocabulary is a hinderance to being truly articulate).

This logically follows. Our stimulus uses the statement people with large vocabularies tend not to engage in creative linguistic self-expression when no available words seem adequate as evidence to its conclusion that large vocabularies are a hinderance to being truly articulate. Since people with large vocabularies don't engage in creative linguistic self-expression, they are not expressing themselves in a truly articulate way. That implies that expressing oneself in a truly articulate way is dependent upon utilizing this creative linguistic self-expression when one's vocabulary is inadequate.

Answer Choice E is incorrect because the implication in our stimulus is that people with large vocabularies always have available words that seem adequate. The stimulus states that people with large vocabularies "have no incentive for, and tend not to engage in" the creative linguistic self expression that is required when no available words are adequate. It would follow that this is because they do have adequate words as a result of their large vocabulary, and therefore do not need to engage in this creative linguistic self-expression.

I hope this helps!