September 2017 LSAT Section 4 Question 18

In many families adults speak to babies in simplified language. Yet constantly repeating simple phrases like "Nice ki...

Hunter on June 15, 2019

Why is C necessary?

I picked E. I realize E is wrong because vocabularly makes it not necessary. If I had picked up on that word, I would have had to pick C. However, I was expecting a correct answer to say mastering grammar is necessary for children to learn language. LL > MG. (Granted my prediction was just that the two needed some connection). C says that mastering grammatical structure always leads to learning a language. MG > LL. Why does MG have to necessarily guarantee LL? What if it was just most? I'm not trying to fight that it is necessary; C is right. I just want to know why. Is it because the argument is basically equating learning grammatical structure to learning language? And its conclusion is that baby talk NEVER helps children learn language, so it's evidence has to 100% of the time. That's why any time a child learns grammar structure they learn language?

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shunhe on December 22, 2019

Hi @Hunter,

Let's assume that C is false, and that there is more to learning a language than mastering the grammatical structure of a language. One might think that, for example, the pronunciation of certain words is important to learning a language. Then it is possible that even though children who don't hear the simple phrases master the grammatical structures as well, they still lack in other areas such as pronunciation. And in that case, repeating simple phrases would provide extra help. Hope this helps.