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Virtually everyone who speaks Torvic lives in Torvia, a small country that takes pride in its unique culture. Since Torvia trades with many other countries, however, most people who live in Torvia speak several languages, and many languages are taught in Torvia`s public schools. Nevertheless, from these facts it should not be inferred that most speakers of Torvic speak several languages, because _____
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Which of the following most logically completes the argument?
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During the early nineteenth century, the demand for ever-louder sound led to ever-increasing tension on piano strings, making evident the need for stronger framing. Sooner or later, long after factories had taken over the manufacture of other commodities, the Industrial Revolution nevertheless shaped the attitudes of those who decided whether to accept this innovation. To build pianos with steam-powered tools was one thing, to put a cast-iron frame at the center of the instrument, making the product itself a modern factory of sound rather than a fully handcrafted artwork, in wood, was quite another. The resulting debate was vigorous, with many feeling certain that iron in the piano would ruin the tone.
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Which of the following statements about the development of the piano can be inferred from the passage?
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In the context in which it appears, “tone”most exactly means
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Eighteenth-century women played a significant part in British political life. Up and down the social scale they performed a variety of political acts, everything from purchasing political artifacts such at plates, handkerchiefs, and fans to penning political pamphlets, starring in civic processions, sponsoring boycotts, arguing over public issues in their own debating societies, rioting, and uttering seditious words. Whereas historians used to see female political involvement in this century as isolated or aberrant, they now stress the continuity and normalcy of such activity, especially for aristocratic women. Given the familial nature of aristocratic politics, noble women were actually expected to act as political advisors and agent for their husbands, to canvass in elections, to serve as political hostesses, to seek and dispense political patronage. They did so routinely long before the eighteenth and deep into the nineteenth century. Patrician women had such far-reaching political influence, it has been argued recently, that they actually stood to rise by expansion of the electorate to include women. Fruitful as this new historiography has been, however, it has politics and its inattention to ideology. Given the widespread political activity of women, why expansion of suffrage did not happen in the eighteenth-century?
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According to the passage, the approach taken by contemporary historians to the issue of the political role of eighteenth-century women differs from that taken by earlier historians in that contemporary historians
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The author would most likely agree with which of the following statements about political acts performed by eighteenth-century women?
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For Temnothorax ants in search of suitable rock crevices for new nest sites, size is an important consideration, and certain behaviors suggest how scouts might compare the size of several sites. After entering a crevice, scouts invariably exit and reenter. During their first inspection, they mark their route with their personal pheromones. (Experiments have shown that workers can distinguish their own pheromones from those of nest mates.) Some researchers believe that these ants are counting the frequency of intersections between their two exploratory trails. The smaller the area, the more likely they are to cross a spot twice. The observation that Temnothorax scouts always pave out a path of the same length on their first visit to sites strongly supports this hypothesis.
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In light of the claim made by the "researchers", it can be inferred that ants` ability to distinguish their own pheromones from these of nest mates is important primarily because
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Which of the following best describe the function of the highlighted portion of the passage?
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The Moon once had a magnetic field, and Mars shows evidence of having had one early in its history, but neither object currently possess a magnetic field. But Mercury, which is halfway in size between the Moon and Mars, has an active and relatively strong magnetic field. Planetary scientists think that planets require a liquid core to sustain such a field, but the smaller the planet, the faster it cools. Mercury, by all right, should have a core as cold and dead as the Moon`s, yet the magnetic field persists. This may result from the presence of elements like sulfur that, when mixed with iron, lower the melting point and keep the core molten.
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The primary basis for the author`s use of the expression "by all right" is Mercury`s
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In the context in which it appears, "dead" most nearly means
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Projecting the idea of a distinctive female demand in seventeenth and eighteenth-century England was a groundbreaking departure in the history of marketing. The pioneers were the booksellers and printers who addressed specialist titles to the ladies in the 1600s, while the post-1688 print boom saw the publication of custom-designed ladies` pocket diaries, a proliferation of female manuals of all kinds, the Female Spectator in the 1740s and the long-running Lady`s Magazine from 1770. The leap to objects was made when leading furniture makers started classifying furniture by the sex, age, and specialist needs of the implied user in the new illustrated catalogs of the 1760s. Of course, sex distinctions in clothes are as old as civilization, while the idea of furniture suited to female needs is not unprecedented (think of birthing stools), but making difference systematic and concrete by means of word, image, and object was a decisive innovation. The rapid diffusion of ladies` and gentlemen`s furniture suggests that gender distinctions already resonated powerfully with male and female consumers, but in the extension of the range of differentiated furniture, the projection of the trope by manufacturers thereafter, and its acceptance by consumers, conventional ideas of masculine importance and femininity delicacy were amplified and fixed. In the process, femininity was expressed in a specific and narrowly defined aesthetic register.
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The author of the passage would most likely agree with which of the following statements regarding the affect of marketing gender-differentiated furniture?
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According to the passage, which of the following is true about furniture prior to the 1760s?
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Which of the following statements best describes the function of the highlighted sentence in the context of the passage as a whole?
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There is little dispute that the early poem of William Wordsworth (1770-1850) called An Evening Walk (1793) draws heavily on eighteenth-century descriptive traditions. Wordsworth made explicit connections to Thomson Gray, and other eighteenth-century poets in textual allusions. Wordsworth`s relationship to his eighteenth-century precursors has dominated critical reaction to the poem, but in a specific, indeed, limited manner, focusing on Wordsworth`s ability to break free of his influences. Because the mainstream of twentieth-century criticism represented Romanticism (the late-eighteenth to early-nineteenth-century movement of which Wordsworth became a defining figure) as a salutary revolt against the sedate norms of eighteenth-century culture, the fortunes of the poem have waxed or waned according to how solid a case could be made for placing it on the far side of the Romantic divide.
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Which of the following best describes the function of the highlighted sentence?
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