PT157.S1.P2.Q10

SECTION 1 · rc

PASSAGE 1

Question 1 Question 2 Question 3 Question 4 Question 5

PASSAGE 2

Question 6 Question 7 Question 8 Question 9 Question 10 Question 11 Question 12

PASSAGE 3

Question 13 Question 14 Question 15 Question 16 Question 17 Question 18 Question 19

PASSAGE 4

Question 20 Question 21 Question 22 Question 23 Question 24 Question 25 Question 26 Question 27

SECTION 2 · lr

Question 1 Question 2 Question 3 Question 4 Question 5 Question 6 Question 7 Question 8 Question 9 Question 10 Question 11 Question 12 Question 13 Question 14 Question 15 Question 16 Question 17 Question 18 Question 19 Question 20 Question 21 Question 22 Question 23 Question 24 Question 25

SECTION 3 · lr

Question 1 Question 2 Question 3 Question 4 Question 5 Question 6 Question 7 Question 8 Question 9 Question 10 Question 11 Question 12 Question 13 Question 14 Question 15 Question 16 Question 17 Question 18 Question 19 Question 20 Question 21 Question 22 Question 23 Question 24 Question 25

SECTION 4 · rc

PASSAGE 1

Question 1 Question 2 Question 3 Question 4 Question 5 Question 6 Question 7

PASSAGE 2

Question 8 Question 9 Question 10 Question 11 Question 12 Question 13 Question 14

PASSAGE 3

Question 15 Question 16 Question 17 Question 18 Question 19 Question 20 Question 21 Question 22

PASSAGE 4

Question 23 Question 24 Question 25 Question 26 Question 27

If anything, prescriptivists would oppose change. They believe in correct usage and want people to either stick with that or change their language to conform to that. But no more changes are necessary after people reach correct usage.

The passage never states this as one of the prescriptivists’ views. (B) might be tempting because we know that prescriptivists don’t think that laws of language transformation are like scientific laws. But “laws of language transformation” is different from “the study of language.” Prescriptivists could very well agree that the study of language is a scientific undertaking – we may want to use scientific methods to study how people use language. Prescriptivists aren’t necessarily opposed to studying language in this way. They would just want to make sure that we try to encourage correct usage.

(D) might be tempting because we know that the prescriptivists do not believe that the laws of language transformation are like scientific laws. However, that doesn’t mean they don’t believe in the existence of language transformation laws at all. They could accept that such laws exist, but simply think that those laws are not like scientific laws. In other words, they are laws that can be changed and influenced by people.

We don’t know what the prescriptivists think about morality. We know that, according to the egalitarian argument of the descriptivists, the prescriptivists’ attempt to police language use is immoral. But that’s the descriptivists’ opinion. It doesn’t tell us what prescriptivists think about morality and its relationship to studying language usage.