Grammarians of the prescriptive school take it as part of their task to distinguish correct from incorrect usage in language and thereby to encourage the former. ████ ███████ ████ ██ ██ █████ ████ ████ ██ █████████ ████ ██ ██████████ █ ██████████ ████████ ████████ ████ ███████ ████ █████████ ███
Prescriptivists ·Distinguish correct from incorrect language use
“Data” is used as a singular noun rather than plural. That's one example of usage judged by prescriptivists to be incorrect, but over time has come to be accepted.
Descriptivists' Objection 2 ·Egalitarian objection (imposing elite standards on language)
Descriptivists object that prescriptivists are immorally trying to impose their own language practices, which are those of the educated and rich elite.
Prescriptivists' Counter to 2 ·Inclusive aims of prescriptivists
Prescriptivists say that having a “correct” usage is important for free exchange of ideas. The goal of prescriptivists is to include, not exclude.
Passage Style
Critique or debate
12.
The passage most strongly suggests ████ ███████████████ ████ █████ ███ ██ ███ █████████ █████ ██ ███████████████
Question Type
Implied
Other’s perspective
Support for the correct answer is likely to be found in the first paragraph or the end of the last paragraph, because that’s where we’re told what prescriptivists think about descriptivists.
We are not told the prescriptivists’ view of the descriptivists’ motivation or whether any part of that motivation relates to some kind of dislike or hatred of prescriptivism.
We have no support for the idea that the prescriptivists think they stick to the scientific method more than the descriptivists do. Nowhere in the passage do we get any indication of the prescriptivists’ belief about their own adherence to the scientific method or a comparison to the descriptivists’ level of adherence.
Supported. The prescriptivists believe that correct usage helps to include people in communication. This is arguably more egalitarian than what the descriptivists want. If we don’t try to correct people’s usage, maybe the people who use language incorrectly will end up excluded from free exchange of ideas with the people who do use language correctly.
d
Descriptivists are generally ███████ ██ ███ ███████████ ██ █████ ████ █████ █████████ ████████ █████ ████ ████ ██████████ ████
The passage never suggests prescriptivists think descriptivists are unaware regarding anything related to the origins (etymologies) of words. Maybe the descriptivists know all the origins, maybe they don’t – we don’t get the prescriptivists’ view about this.
The passage never suggests that prescriptivists think that descriptivists’ empirical observations “generally” support prescriptivist views. Although the passage does discuss some empirical observations about language change in the last paragraph, that doesn’t support a claim about what is “generally” true about empirical observations or whether those observations were the descriptivists’ own observations.
Difficulty
49% of people who answer get this correct
This is a difficult question.
It is slightly harder than the average question in this passage.
CURVE
Score of students with a 50% chance of getting this right
25%145
158
75%171
Analysis
Implied
Other’s perspective
Critique or debate
Humanities
Science
Answer Popularity
PopularityAvg. score
a
7%
153
b
18%
153
c
49%
162
d
14%
150
e
12%
155
Question history
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