#4 - Concept Reference, Must Be True

[Administrator]

Please post your questions below!

[Khodi7531]

I chose A over C. I thought "according to the passage" was going to be referring to a DIRECT sentence that states the answer - or a very very close paraphrase.

I find C directly in line 50... although I can see "undergo" an issue.

Nonetheless, I liked A but didn't chose it because although I was able to find a few points where it can be INFERRED and no way directly stated, I thought it would be wrong since anything that's this question type needs a direct line reference.


....Help....

[Robert Carroll]

Khodi,

An inference is something supported just as much as a direct statement. Imagine a statement like "There are four dialects common in San Francisco." Now imagine a statement like "There are more than three but fewer than five dialects common in San Francisco." In one case, I'm directly told there are four; in another, I can infer it with absolutely certainty, even though it's not directly stated. For the purpose of a question which asks "According to the passage, how many dialects are common in San Francisco?", each hypothetical allows me to answer the question exactly the same. There is no relevant difference.

Thus, if you are able to infer what answer choice (A) says from the passage, then answer choice (A) is correct.

As far as answer choice (C) goes, line 50 does not provide evidence for it. Line 50 tells me that sounds, grammar, and vocabulary can differ among dialects, but it doesn't say they changed. They were different, either because they started that way or because they changed. I can't tell which it is, so I can't make such an inference from line 50 (or elsewhere).

Robert Carroll

[mluskey15]

Can someone post a better explanation as to where/why (A) is correct? I find the above explanation to be too matter of fact that doesn't really help solve the confusion.

[Christen Hammock]

Hi Mluskey!

Answer Choice (A) can be directly supported by Lines 25-27: "[t]he core of the language brought to the U.S. by Chinese people has remained intact"!

Christen

[Tajadas]

Hi, I thought A was a contender because of the shared use of the word 'core', but I ultimately eliminated it because I thought the end of the answer was misleading.

Because I could find no reference to time in the passage (only location), I prephrased the correct answer to be "remain at their core essentially the same despite far distances". While I suppose "traditional" could indicate time, I took it more to mean "from the place of origin", or China. Is there something I'm missing that would've led me to the correct prephrase?

[Adam Tyson]

I shared your concern upon my first reading of answer A, Tajadas, as I didn't recall anything about the passage of time. But after sorting the answers into losers and contenders, it seemed to be the only answer worth keeping, as all the others had fatal flaws rather than minor blemishes.

While that should be enough to allow us to confidently select answer A, we can find additional support for the "over time" aspect of the answer if we look for it. The phrase "has remained intact" has an implied temporal meaning, suggesting that the core of the language has endured for some period of time. Also, the fact that "new arrivals" can conduct conversations with locals suggests that the core of the language has endured and will continue to do so, because "new arrivals" is a temporal idea suggesting that it has happened, is happening, and will continue to happen. It's not set in a fixed timeframe, such as "in 1918, new arrivals were able to communicate with the local population."

While there may be some room for debate around my interpretation of those phrases, it's not hard to see that they could be interpreted in that way, which should make us feel better about "over time" in answer A. But even if it doesn't, there is still no answer anywhere near as good to compete with it, and so it has to be the credited response.