In 1940, Benjamin Lee Whorf seduced a whole generation into believing

Passage A

In 1940, Benjamin Lee Whorf seduced a whole
generation into believing that our mother tongue
restricts what we are able to think. In particular, Whorf
announced, Hopi and English impose different pictures
(5) of reality on their speakers, impeding mutual
understanding. Eventually, it transpired that there
had never actually been any evidence to support his
fantastic claims.

Whorf's main mistake was to assume that our
(10) mother tongue prevents us from being able to think
certain thoughts; new research suggests that in reality
its influence consists in what it obliges us to think
about. German, for example, forces me to designate my
neighbor as male (Nachbar) or female (Nachbarin).
(15) Furthermore, grammatical genders can shape the
feelings and associations that speakers have toward
objects around them. In the 1990s, psychologists
compared associations that speakers of German and
Spanish make. There are many inanimate nouns whose
(20) genders in the two languages are reversed. A German
bridge is feminine (die Brucke), for instance, but el
puente is masculine in Spanish; and the same goes for
clocks and violins. When speakers were asked about the
characteristics of various objects, Spanish
(25) speakers deemed bridges, clocks, and violins to have
stereotypically masculine properties like strength, but
Germans tended to think of them as more slender or
elegant. With objects like mountains or chairs, which
are "he" in German but "she" in Spanish, the effect was
(30) reversed.

Passage B

Studies involving Piraha and Munduruku Indian
subjects from the Brazilian Amazonia give evidence
regarding the role of language in the development of
numerical reasoning. The subjects in these reports
(35) apparently have consistent, unambiguous words for
one and two and more loosely used words for three
and four, but these subjects may not have true number
words at all. Moreover, they do not overtly count, either
with number words or by means of tallies. Yet, when
(40) tested on a variety of numerical tasks-naming the
number of items in a stimulus set, constructing sets of
equivalent number, judging which of two sets is more
numerous, and mental addition and subtraction-the
results appear to indicate that the subjects possess an
(45) innate imprecise nonverbal concept of number.

In showing that subjects with no verbal counting
system have a concept of approximate numerical
magnitude comparable to that of numerate subjects,
these reports support a non-Whorfian, language
(50) independent view of the origins of our concept of
number. However, there is more to the story. Numerate
subjects have a strong intuition of exact numerical
equality. Two plus two is exactly four, not roughly four.
When the innumerate subjects in these reports matched
(55) a set of four items to a set of five, or judged that
6~3=2, they gave evidence of being indifferent to exact
numerical equality, an indifference not seen in numerate
control subjects. Thus, the reports suggest that learning
number words either creates a concept of exact
(60) numerical equality (a strong Whorfian hypothesis), or
mediates the expansion of such a concept (a weaker
Whorfian hypothesis), or directs attention to such a
concept (a non-Whorfian hypothesis).

1. Both passages are concerned with answering which one of the following questions?

(A) Are there limits to the translatability of one language into another?
(B) What does scientific research reveal about the relation between language and thought?
(C) Do differences among languages result from different ways of thinking about the world?
(D) Were Whorf's claims about language based on better evidence than previously thought?
(E) Is the influence of language on thought confined to specific areas such as number and gender?


2. In the first sentence of passage B, the word "subjects" refers to which one of the following?

(A) words
(B) topics
(C) people
(D) relations
(E) objects


3. Which one of the following is true about the relationship between the two passages?

(A) Passage A presents examples of languages that picture reality in compatible ways, whereas passage B presents examples of languages that picture reality in incompatible ways.
(B) Passage A depicts language as influencing thought by means of its vocabulary, whereas passage B depicts language as influencing thought by means of its grammatical structure.
(C) Passage A regards linguistic differences as rendering mutual understanding impossible, whereas passage B regards them as a surmountable obstacle to mutual understanding.
(D) Passage A portrays linguistic differences as arising from conceptual differences, whereas passage B portrays conceptual differences as arising from linguistic differences.
(E) Passage A focuses on differences in people's subjective associations, whereas passage B focuses on the possession of concepts.


4. Given the style and tone of each passage, which one of the following is most likely to be true?

(A) The author of passage A is writing for a general audience, while the author of passage B is addressing a more academic audience.
(B) The author of passage A is an anthropologist, while the author of passage B is a linguist.
(C) The author of passage A is a neutral observer, while the author of passage B is an advocate of a particular view.
(D) The author of passage A is interested mainly in the historical development of an idea, whereas the author of passage B is concerned with its truth.
(E) The author of passage A is dismissive of the ideas under discussion, while the author of passage B takes them more seriously.


5. Which one of the following principles underlies the argument in passage B, but not that in passage A?

(A) If different languages apply incompatible concepts to one and the same object, then that suggests those concepts were created by those languages.
(B) If a speaker possesses a concept for which the speaker's language lacks an expression, then that suggests that the concept was not created by language.
(C) If one's language prevented one from possessing certain concepts, then one would not be able to learn a language in which such concepts are represented.
(D) If a concept can be expressed more exactly in one language than in another language, then it is likely that the concept was created by those languages.
(E) If a language obliges speakers to think about a concept, that concept must have been obtained independently of the language.