#18 - Classicist: Our mastery of Latin and Ancient Greek is at best

[Hanin Abu Amara]

Complete Question Explanation

Method-AP. The correct answer choice is (B).

The stimulus' conclusions is the argument that our mastery of latin and Ancient Greek is at best imperfect. This conclusion is supported by the premise that best students immerse themselves in the language to attain near perfection and you can't go back in time to Ancient Greece or for example Plato's academy.

In Method AP questions we want to pin-point what role a specific question plays. The question stem is asking as to look to the last sentence about being unable to go back in time to Plato's academy. Why was this sentence in the stimulus? it was there to offer an example to strengthen the fact that we can't immerse ourselves in latin or Ancient Greece since FOR EXAMPLE we can't go Plato's academy. Our prephrase is that the sentence is an example that helps the conclusion.

Answer choice (A): is incorrect because the main conclusion is the first sentence. We don't have premises that don't support time travel.

Answer choice (B): This is the correct answer choice. This matches our prephrase. This is an example that helps our conclusion that we can't perfect our latin and ancient greek

Answer choice (C): Since this example does lend logical support to the argument, C is incorrect

Answer choice (D): To say that the example "guarantees" the conclusion would be to go too far. The example certainly helps but it doesn't prove or help that immersion is how we perfect language.

Answer choice (E): There is only one conclusion in this stimulus, and as such there isn't an ancillary conclusion

[German.Steel]

What a strange question. I've never seen the term "points up" on the LSAT (correct me if I'm wrong, anyone). I ultimately chose it because although (D) is kind of tempting, "guarantees the truth of the conclusion" is never correct on this type of question, ever (again correct me if I'm wrong, anyone), and the other answer choices are dumb apart from (B) and (D). (D) is tough though, because it does seem to guarantee the truth, but I think it ultimately requires some small assumptions.

Premise: No one can actually go back to the Academy and study the languages
Conclusion: Our knowledge of them is therefore imperfect at best

Definitely some mild assumptions built in there but they do border on the commonsensical, which is why (D) is tempting.

[Robert Carroll]

German.Steel,

I don't think I've seen the phrase "points up" on the LSAT, but it's a standard English idiom.

If the premise guaranteed the truth of the argument's conclusion, then it would Justify that conclusion, right? So you can think of this in Justify terms - if we had an argument without the last statement (the part after the semicolon) and the last statement were an answer choice, would we pick it for a Justify? Of course not. So it doesn't guarantee the truth of the conclusion.

The assumptions are far, far from common sensical. Why should the fact that we can't literally travel back in time mean we can't understand Latin and Ancient Greek perfectly? That's a rhetorical question - it doesn't mean that.

Robert Carroll

[gwlsathelp]

Premises:

"The best students of a modern language may so immerse themselves in a country where it is spoken as to attain nearly perfect knowledge"
;
"but you cannot travel back in time to spend a year abroad at Plato's Academy"

Conclusion:

Therefore, "our mastery of Latin and Ancient Greek is at best imperfect"

I agree that the idiomatic language used is confusing. Never seen it before, but I suppose it is equivalent to saying "refers to". The issue or key to the stimulus is that Latin and Ancient Greek are not spoken languages and can only be hypothesized as to what they may have sounded like. To attain nearly perfect knowledge, language immersion gets them there. Immersion of Latin and Ancient Greek is not possible (unless time machines existed). Therefore, our mastery of those languages is at best, imperfect/not near perfect. The conclusion is drawn from that last part that highlights a contrast between modern language learners and ancient language learners. I kept the semicolon in the stimulus area to indicate that the premises are closely related even though they are two complete clauses.

[Adam Tyson]

Good work there, gwlsathelp, and your diagram also encapsulates my prephrase: the claim in question is a premise of the argument. That might make answer D attractive for some students, but the problem of course is that while the premise supports the conclusion, it does not guarantee the truth of the conclusion. We cannot know if immersion in a culture that speaks a language is required for achieving perfect mastery of that language, and we cannot know if time travel to Plato's Academy is the only way to get that kind of immersion.

[Bmas123]

Can someone explain what answer B means? I had correctly identified the conclusion and everything, but I went with D because I thought that since the example was support, it was a premise. So I guess can someone explain why answer D is wrong as well? thank you!

[Robert Carroll]

Bmas123,

"Points up" means "draws attention to". The argument thinks that learning Latin and Greek and learning modern languages will differ in at least one way - to learn German, I can go to Berlin and immerse myself in German, but I can't go to ancient Rome (modern Rome is a different story!) to immerse myself in Latin. Thus, the author uses Plato's Academy as an example contrasting the ways you can learn modern languages from the no-longer-present ways you could learned ancient languages. The clause in the question thus draws attention to the contrast by using an example.

As I said earlier in this thread, the clause in the question does not guarantee the truth of the conclusion. It's a premise, so that part of answer choice (D) looks fine, but it doesn't guarantee the conclusion, so answer choice (D) is incorrect.

Robert Carroll

[mkloo11]

Hi all. I don't know if this is just me, but this question has really escaped me. I missed it on my first pass at this section almost 2 months ago, and today I missed it again -- even though I'd reviewed and read these responses after the first time. Clearly, I didn't grasp the lesson.

I narrowed my options down to B and D, and both times went with D in the end. I agree that "guarantees" is a really strong order -- justification-level strong -- but D seems to do that in my (mistaken for sure, but still confused as to how) eyes.

Here's how I've been reading it:

Premise: To attain perfect knowledge of a modern language, students must immerse themselves in a country where it is spoken.
Premise: It is not possible to immerse ourselves in the place where Latin and Ancient Greek were spoken (Plato's Academy).
Conclusion: Our mastery of Latin and Ancient Greek cannot be perfect (is at best imperfect).

In my mind, that second premise does guarantee the conclusion. I'm effectively reading the first premise as a conditional, and the second premise as saying that the necessary condition (immersion) is not possible, so the sufficient condition (perfect mastery) cannot be either.

As I'm examining this, I'm noting two leaps: 1) the first premise is about modern languages, while the second one/example is about ancient ones. 2) I've assumed that Plato's Academy was the only place in which one could immerse themselves in the ancient languages. I didn't think this was a huge or superfluous jump.

If anyone has any thoughts on where I'm going wrong, I'd super appreciate it. I've spent so much time on this question that I'm loathe to let it go. Thanks!

[mkloo11]

Sorry, just editing to add a little more of my thinking.

Part of the reason why I rejected B was that I thought the contrast part was a bit implicit. If the conclusion had said "but you cannot travel back in time to spend a year abroad at Plato's Academy the way you could travel to Italy to master Italian" then I think I'd have liked it more.

But honestly, if D hadn't looked so compelling, I probably wouldn't have thought B was incorrect. Thanks again!

[Luke Haqq]

Hi mkloo11!

To your first post, I think your second premise could be more precise. You suggest,

Premise: To attain perfect knowledge of a modern language, students must immerse themselves in a country where it is spoken.
Premise: It is not possible to immerse ourselves in the place where Latin and Ancient Greek were spoken (Plato's Academy).
Conclusion: Our mastery of Latin and Ancient Greek cannot be perfect (is at best imperfect).

For the second premise, I think a better wording could be: "It is not possible to [travel back in time to be able to] immerse ourselves in the place where Latin and Ancient Greek were spoken (Plato's Academy)." With that limitation added, a possibility arises: what if there were some other way to immerse oneself in ancient times? The premise is only about traveling back in time not being an available option. But perhaps computers or artificial intelligence could make it possible to immerse oneself in such cultures. A possibility such as that, one that provides an immersive experience that doesn't involve traveling back in time, is a reason why the second premise doesn't guarantee the conclusion.

On your second post, you comment,

Part of the reason why I rejected B was that I thought the contrast part was a bit implicit.

Though it's understandable that being more implicit can make the contrast more difficult to detect, it's good that you at least noticed it. That contrast should make (B) clearly the best of the answer choices. In general, even if something is implicit or not directly stated in the stimulus, it can still be tested in the answer choices.