The passage discusses how certain poets use “peculiarities of language.†There are two possible explanations when a poet uses a peculiarity: 1) They appear in writing by other poets as well and therefore reflect the language in common use during the poet’s time; or 2) They only appear in this poet’s writing and therefore are a personal idiosyncrasy. The passage goes on to say that these linguistic “fingerprints†can be used to help identify poems of previously unknown authorship.
What is the problem with this test to identify the author of a poem based on the peculiarities of language? The question asks you to identify the reason the test can never provide conclusive proof of authorship of any poem.
Remember that the argument provided two explanations for peculiarities. How can you be certain this peculiarity is only used by this poet and is therefore a “fingerprint†that can been used to identify authorship? Imagine if one poet is the only one known to have used language in this particular way and then a poem of unknown authorship is discovered that uses the same language. You can never be absolutely certain that this new poem isn’t from another poet using language in common use during their shared time (the first explanation). Answer C expresses this problem with the test. A peculiarity of language in a poem of unknown authorship could be evidence of either explanation - either it is unique to that one poet known to use it or there were others that also used the peculiarity. Therefore, Answer C is correct.
You ask why Answer B is not correct. Answer B is certainly a problem with the test described in the passage. A peculiarity is likely not to be used in every poem written by the author, so looking for a single peculiarity would not allow you to identify every poem written by the poet. This answer provides a reason why this test cannot be used to provide proof of authorship for every poem by an author. However, that is not the question. The question asks you to find the reason why this test cannot provide conclusive proof for any poem. While Answer B identifies a problem with the test, it is not the reason why the test cannot provide conclusive proof of authorship for any program.
I hope this is helpful! Please reach out with other questions.
tomgbeanDecember 25, 2019
I don't understand your reasoning behind C. You didn't explain why We can never be absolutely certain that if an author is the only one known to have used the idiosyncrasy and a poem of unknown origin is discovered, that he cannot be the author of the poem. Why can't we be sure of it?
shunheJanuary 6, 2020
Hi @tomgbean,
We can't be sure of the author is the author of that poem because we have two possibilities for the idiosyncrasy.
1) The idiosyncrasy was peculiar and only the author used it, so the author wrote the new, unknown poem. 2) Another author wrote it, so the idiosyncrasy was not peculiar.
We can't pick one of these over the other with this test, and so we can't be sure if the author is the author or not. Hope this helps!
