Quantifiers Questions - - Question 17

All parrots can learn to speak a few words and phrases. Not all parrots have equally pleasant dispositions, though so...

isabella April 18, 2020

diagramming

when you combine statement 1 and 3, why is it learn some words-some-pleasant instead of learn some words-some-Australian parrot?

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shunhe April 18, 2020

Hi @isabella,

Thanks for the question! Let’s take a look at statements 1 and 3. Statement 1 tells us:

parrot —> learn to speak a few words and phrases

Statement 3 tells us:

Native to Australia <—Some —> Sweet temper (pleasant)

Now, we know that all parrots, including Australian parrots, can learn to speak some words and phrases. Which means that actually, it’s the case that all Australian parrots can learn some words and phrases, and as you noted, some entities that can learn some words and phrases are Australian parrots. But you don’t really need statement 3 for this. You can make the same conclusion about any subset of parrot, really.

Now, we know that some Australian parrots are pleasant. And we also know that all parrots can learn some words. This means that some entities that are pleasant (namely, Australian parrots) can learn some words. And it means that some entities that can learn words (Australian parrots) are pleasant. And so this is how we get the first sentence.

Hope this helps. Feel free to ask any further questions that you might have.