Lesson 2 Opposition Construct Application Drill

[tthauvette]

Hi,
It is obviously not clear to me the opposition construct, as simple as it should be. In the L2 (2-4) questions, I did not get the following answers correct:

1-Each of the following are not necessarily true except:
What it really means___________
I picked Could be false
Correct answer is must be true
I don't get it?
2-And Each of the following cannot be false except:
What it really means__________
I wrote must be true
Correct answer: Not recess true
Any help would be appreciated.

thanks,

Tania

[Jonathan Evans]

Hi, Tthauvette,

Welcome to the forums! Thank you for your post.

Sometimes it helps to parse these phrases out. Start from the beginning and stop when you have something meaningful. For instance:

Each of the following are not necessarily true STOP HERE

So far we have: Could be false/Not necessarily true

Now continue:

EXCEPT

"Except" negates whatever preceded it, in this case "Not necessarily true." So what's the logical opposite of "Not necessarily true?" Well if you don't remember right away, you could think of it as "Not not necessarily true." The "nots" cancel and you're left with "necessarily true" or "must be true."

Same with the second question:

Each of the following cannot be false STOP HERE

So far we have: Cannot be false/Must be true

Now continue:

EXCEPT

So we have: Not cannot be false can be false not necessarily true

I hope this helps!

[tthauvette]

The light bulb went on. I missed the negation with the word "except". So helpful, thanks so much