PT59.S3.Q19 - if understanding a word

hlsat180

http://7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-59-section-3-question-19/
Can anyone explain this question and how the correct answer logically follows?

Accounts Playable

This is a very hard inference question.

If understanding a word always involves knowing the definition, then understanding a word requires understanding the words in the definition. There are people who don't understand the words in the definition.

What I am looking for: It seems that the necessary condition is failed: understanding a word doesn't always involve knowing the definition. However, the correct answer is extremely subtle.

Answer A: This "feels" like it's saying what I anticipated, but it isn't. We don't know if the babies understand the words or not. The original fact pattern talked about a hypothetical: IF understanding a word involves knowing a definition, then blah blah blah. But, what if that belief is just wrong? For this answer choice to be correct, you must assume that the conditional statement actually is true. That isn't an OK assumption.

Answer B: Any number of people? Our additional premise is about babies, so how are we to make a conclusion about all people?

Answer C: This also sort of "feels" right, but again, we don't know if babies understand the words or not. All we know is that they don't know/understand the dictionary words.

Answer Not understanding ANY other word? This is too strong of a statement. Plus, this just fails the sufficient condition. The rule falls away and anything is possible. So, this could be a true statement, but it also could be false.

Answer E: This is really good. Now, we KNOW for a fact that the babies understand all of their words. If that's the case, the conditional hypothetical cannot be true since there is some understanding of words without knowing the dictionary definition.

hlsat180

Thank you for the quick response and clear breakdown. In hindsight and with your explanations Answer E makes sense. How would you advise any approach to such hard inference questions under timed conditions? Here's what I did and why:

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1. Reading the stimulus, I noticed the "But clearly..." but still failed to understand what was being asked (e.g., couldn't babies utter words or imitate any sounds they do not understand?) Therefore, moved on to the answers hoping to infer a clue. Scanning the answers eliminated B and D as obvious Losers.

2. Still didn't understand what was being asked and so diagrammed stimulus argument:

P1: UW --> KD (Understanding a Word --> Knowing its Definition); then
P2: UW --> WD (Understanding a Word --> Words in Definition);
C: But clearly B -s-> ~KD (Babies -some-> NOT KD)

Noted two things: NA gap between P1 and P2 ( KD --> WD ) and C (But clearly...) introduces B and links with ~KD.

3. Diagrammed the answers:

Ans A: B -s-> ~UW
Ans C: UW -s-> KD then B -s-> UW
Ans E: B -s-> UW then UW -s-> ~KD

Still not sure but eliminated Answer A because of no reference to KD. Answer E sorta makes sense (completing the link B -s-> UW -s-> ~KD) but doesn't that incorrectly assume if Some X are Y, and some Y are Z, then some X are Z? Already spent too much time so selected Answer C and moved on.
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Searching online many people are still confused about this question let alone (besides hoping it doesn't appear) how best to approach such a question.

Elle2015

@hlsat180 said:
Reading the stimulus, I noticed the "But clearly..." but still failed to understand what was being asked (e.g., couldn't babies imitate words/sounds they do not understand?) Therefore, moved on to the answers hoping to infer a clue. Scanning the answers eliminated B and D as obvious Losers.

What do you mean when you say you didn't understand what was being asked? Why do you think you didn't understand it? Your key to approaching these types of questions might be related to not understanding the stim.

I try to avoid diagramming because it feels abstract and like a bit of a time sink to me. I didn't diagram this question. I didn't move on from the stimulus until I had a strong grasp of what it was saying. I read it more than once and mentally noted that it left the issue of babies' understanding open as the last sentence was about what babies say, not what they understand.

A - This feels like a trap. We don't know what babies understand. Maybe they do this, maybe they don't.
B - I quickly moved on.
C - I quickly moved on. Intuitively, this strikes me as "backwards." Just because some words can be understood without knowing the definitions, doesn't mean that babies understand anything. They could be repeating sounds.
D - I quickly moved on. This goes beyond the scope of the stimulus, with its talk of any other word.
E - Okay. This is what I was thinking from the beginning.

I went through the answer choices aggressively and quickly, but only after I understood the stimulus, which I had to reread. While practicing, I worked to develop a "sense" so that I wouldn't have to diagram.