Hi, i am wondering can anyone explain why A is wrong?
I am also wondering how to negate B, is it None of the people will engage in the international trade?
Thanks in advance for help.
ohthatpatrick Wrote:Hey, there.
(A) is wrong because negating it has no effect on the strength of the argument.
The author is claiming that in a world economy with a universal language, we'll still develop regional dialects in response to local populations' particular communicative needs.
If we negate (A), it would say "at least two local populations have the same communicative needs as each other".
Does that hurt the argument? No. Those local populations that have the same communicative needs will just speak the same dialect. The author's conclusion is still valid as long as many other local populations have different communicative needs.
(And, naturally, the correct answer (E) gets right to the essence of that idea. Negating (E) says "there WON'T be many different communicative needs" which implies that "there WON'T be many different dialects")
In general, on Necessary Assumption, it pays to be skeptical of any answer choice that sounds very extreme. Extreme assumptions are sometimes correct, if they match up with extreme language in the argument. But very often, these answers accuse the author of believing something much stronger or more specific than anything he actually claimed.
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Your answer to your 2nd question, how do we negate (B), was half right.
When an answer has a quantity term in it, we have to negate the quantity term.
Otherwise, we negate the main verb.
Quick examples:
a) Flossing helps prevent gingivitis
negated) Flossing DOES NOT HELP prevent gingivitis
b) At least some of my friends are Libertarians.
negated) NONE of my friends are Libertarians.
If, for (b), I had instead negated the main verb, I would have gotten
"At least some of my friends ARE NOT Libertarians".
Does that contradict the original statement?
"At least some of my friends are Libertarians"
No. Since those don't contradict, one is not the negation of the other. And that's why when a claim has a quantity expression in it, the only way to contradict the claim is to negate the quantity expression.
QUANTITY ................... NEGATED QUANTITY
some, sometimes ........ none, never, no
most ........................... few, less than half
all, always ................... not all, not always
We can go in either direction here. If you started with a quantity from the right column, its negation would be the corresponding term in the left column.
So choice (B) on Q14 said "at least some will not engage in international trade".
Negated: "No one will not engage in international trade".
Since that's a double-negative, we should clean it up for our brains by rephrasing that as "Everyone will engage in international trade".
FYI, we should EITHER negate the quantity term or negate the main verb. We never do both.
Your version of how to negate (B) was
"No one will engage in international trade"
You had changed the quantity of "at least some" into "No one" and also changed the main verb from "will not engage" to "will engage". So just watch out for that.
Hope this helps. Let me know if it elicits further questions.