PT5.S1.Q24 - Peculiarities by poet

MISC_K79

I totally don't understand this question. Need help and let me know if I read correctly.

Stimuli provides: certain peculiarities are used unconsciously, and if used by more than 1 poet, it represents common usage; if used by only 1 poet, then its unique trait which plays as "fingerprint" allowing the scholars to identify the poem of that poet.

Q stem asks to choose the proof from ACs that goes against the stimuli.

(A) - wrong : didn't like "labor"
(B) - don't understand so I'll leave it
(C) - this was correct AC but I don't get it: well, if such peculiarity was not unique to that author, then doesn't it suggest that it could be the commonly used language among other poets as provided in the stimuli?
(E) - thought this was the correct answer; if peculiarities are used "conscious" (by other poets) even if it is supposed to be unique in other poems, then it would make the scholars hard to identify

Can someone explain?

Kangtime

Hi there, here's my thought process:

Eliminating (A) and (D) was pretty easy, but the rest required some thinking!

(E) is ultimately irrelevant because it doesn't matter whether they were unconscious or conscious, as long as we know that they are peculiarities. The conditions they give us in the stimulus is "if the peculiarities were used by several authors, then...", and "if the peculiarities were used by work of only one author, then...", so what matters is just how many authors used those peculiarities, not if they were conscious and unconscious. For (E) to be right, it would have to say something about how not being able to identify them as conscious or unconscious ultimately provides a hinderance in us determining whether certain usage of words by authors are peculiarities at all to begin with - and it doesn't.

(B) seems like a jumbled nonsense answer. It starts by saying that when an author uses an idiosyncratic peculiarity, they don't use the peculiarity in every single one of their works. Because of that, a work that is not known to be written by that author might not include that peculiarity. I think what this answer is trying to bait is for us to make the assumption that "work that is not known to be written by that poet" is actually written by that poet - so using that technique mentioned will not be able to correctly identify the correct poet.
But the technique is ultimately saying that IF the peculiarity exists, then it can be used to identify the author. If the peculiarity doesn't exist in a specific work as (B) tells us, then you simply don't use the technique, and therefore this situation becomes irrelevant.

Another reason why (B) might seem attractive is because we might make the bad assumption that this poem through the technique will falsely assign the authorship to someone else - but that is impossible given the conditionals. Ultimately this can never happen as if it is a common peculiarity, then the technique will not be used. If it were to be false assigned to someone else, then it must contain an idiosyncratic peculiarity by another author, but that would be impossible if it was actually written by someone else. So this situation is irrelevant for this reason as well.

I arrived at (C) through POE, mostly. Now looking at (C) again, I think it's actually a very clear answer saying that when we see a peculiarity, we actually don't know whether it is a common peculiarity or an idiosyncratic peculiarity. So the distinction we need to make clear in order to decide whether to apply the technique is unclear. This means that there are most likely going to be situations where we mistake a common peculiarity as an idiosyncratic one, and falsely ascribe a poem to a wrong author - this will be a reason supporting the argument that the technique can never provide conclusive proof.

Sorry for the long answer - after writing all that down, I think a very simple answer can be made in this way:

The stimulus says if A (common peculiarity), technique cannot be used. IF B (idiosyncratic peculiarity), then technique can be used to assign authorship.
What (C) tells us is that we actually can't accurately tell A from B for a work of unknown authorship. Then this would make the technique pretty much useless.

Hope that helps!

MISC_K79

@Kangtime That is great and thorough explanation! Thanks, now I get it!!