#24 - One sure way you can tell how quickly a new idea--for

[lawschoolforme]

Hi,

I'm completely at odds with this assumption question!

Here are my thoughts so far:

The conclusion is the first sentence, so I'm potentially looking for an answer choice that, when negated, attacks it.

D and E both are related to the first sentence. But when I negate them...the conclusion doesn't really feel attacked.

Thanks!

-lawschoolforme

[Dave Killoran]

Hi Lawschool,

Please go back and take a look at this one again, but before you do, take a look at that question stem again:

• The method described above for determining how quickly a new idea is taking hold relies on which one of the following assumptions?

I added the bolding above to emphasize that in this case, the question stem tells you that the assumption is related to the method of using dictionary editors. Now look at (D) and (E) again, and see if that doesn't change your perception of whether answer choice (D) is an assumption or not.

Thanks!

[lawschoolforme]

Hi,

Oh snap! Thanks for pointing that out - I totally missed that!

-lawschoolforme

[Basia W]

Good morning,

I had a question regarding this assumption question stem. I chose answer C, because when I negated it "dictionary editors do NOT have to include the relevant word or words in their dictionary in order for them to take hold" would destroy the professional opinion of these dictionary editors. Could you possibly explain why D was correct?

Thank you,

best,

Basia

[BethRibet]

Hi Basia,

Thanks for the question. The key to this question is that the word "idea" in the first sentence is not quite the same as the word "words" in the latter sentence. The first sentence, which is also the conclusion, tells us about a method to measure whether *ideas* are passing into common usage. Dictionary editors are apparently good judges of whether *words* are doing so. As long as ideas and the words that give them form are relatively the same, then this argument is fine. But if the meaning of a word is distorted as it becomes popular, then we couldn't judge how common the original *idea* was by monitoring that word.

For instance, think about people saying something is "the bomb" (kind of a flashback to the 1990s)-- they're often not referring to warfare or combat. If we tried to test how often people were talking about military events by counting how often people said "bomb", we could draw the wrong conclusion -- because they could just be saying something was great, or awesome. As in, that party was the bomb -- which doesn't mean, that party was hit by a weapon from a fighter plane, but that it was a great party!

D captures that assumption. We're assuming the commonly used words *haven't* changed meaning from the original idea they were attached to.

Hope this helps!
Beth

[biskam]

I was tempted by A. I see how D is right but I'm not 100% sure how it's wrong. Is it because if a word is rarely used it could still be commonly used?

[James Finch]

Hi Biksam,

The issue with answer choice (A) is that it if it were false, it would not invalidate the conclusion. In this case, whether dictionary editors are professionally interested in rarely used words or not is irrelevant to whether they can determine the point at which a word has passed into common usage. The Assumption Negation technique shows this.

Dictionary editors are professionally interested in words that are only rarely used.



You cannot tell how quickly a new idea is taking hold among the population by monitoring how fast the word or words expressing that particular idea are passing into common usage

This linkage doesn't work, so we can see that (A) is incorrect.

Hope this clears things up!

[hassan66]

For E, should it have been words denoting new ideas are not used before the ideas are understood? Because if the words are used before the ideas are understood then how can you attribute the popularity of a word by measuring something before people even knew what it meant? Does E weaken the argument?

[Adam Tyson]

I think you're on to something there, hassan66! The author seems to think that the popularity of a word tells you something about the popularity of the idea that word represents. The author doesn't have to assume that the use of the word precedes the understanding of the idea, and in fact that might hurt his argument, because popular use of a word would then not represent the popularity of the underlying idea! Trying the Negation Technique on answer E, we get that words denoting new ideas do NOT tend to be used before the ideas denoted are understood, and that would actually help the argument. That's the exact opposite of what we want when we negate the correct answer to an assumption question, proving that this answer is incorrect.

Nice job, good analysis! Keep that up!

[wapet1]

how can we tell that how quickly a new idea spread?

by monitoring how fast the word( + its same definition) become common among ppl. so this is actually the concl.

so in order to determine the speed of the new idea, the author must assume that the idea must have the same definition. like what the conl. is saying. if i negate it, it seems like it does not match up with what concl. is describing.

am I right?

also can i simply ignore answer chocie c because we are only focusing on the conclusion?