CAT 2017 Slot 2 — VARC Question 27
Answer the following questions based on the information given below.
Despite their fierce reputation, Vikings may not have always been the plunderers and pillagers popular culture imagines them to be. In fact, they got their start trading in northern European markets, researchers suggest.
Combs carved from animal antlers, as well as comb manufacturing waste and raw antler material has turned up at three archaeological sites in Denmark, including a medieval marketplace in the city of Ribe. A team of researchers from Denmark and U.K.hoped to identify the species of animal to which the antlers once belonged by analyzing collagen proteins in the samples and comparing them across the animal kingdom, Laura Geggel reports for liveScience.
Somewhat surprisingly, molecular analysis of the artifacts revealed that some combs and other material had been carved from reindeer antlers…. Given that reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) don’t live in Denmark, the researchers posit that it arrived on Viking ships from Norway. Antler craftsmanship, in the form of decorative combs, was part of Viking culture. Such combs served as symbols of good health, Geggel writes. The fact that the animals shed their antlers also made them easy to collect from the large herds that inhabited Norway.
Since the artifacts were found in marketplace areas at each site it’s more likely that the Norsemen came to trade rather than pillage. Most of the artifacts also date to the 780s, but some are as old as 725. That predates the beginning of Viking raids on great Britain by about 70 years. (Traditionally, the so-called “Viking Age” began with these raids in 793 and ended with Norman conquest of Great Britain in 1066.) Archaeologists had suspected that the Viking had experience with ling maritime voyages [that] might have preceded their raiding days. Beyond Norway, these combs would have been a popular industry in Scandinavia as well. It’s possible that the antler comb’s represent a larger trade network, where the Norsemen supplied raw material to craftsmen in Denmark and elsewhere.
The passage given below is followed by four summaries. Choose the option that best captures the author’s position.
A fundamental property of language is that it is slippery and messy and more liquid than solid, a gelatinous mass that changes shape of fit. As Wittgenstein would remind us, “usage has no sharp boundary”.
Oftentimes, the only way to determine the meaning of a word is to examine how it is used. This insight is often described as the “meaning is use” doctrine. There are differences between the “meaning is use” doctrine and a dictionary-first theory of meaning. “The dictionary’s careful fixing of words to definitions, like butterflies pinned under glass, can suggest that this is how language works. The definitions can seem to ensure and fix the meaning of words, just as the gold standard can back a country’s currency”. What Wittgenstein found in the circulation of ordinary language, however, was a free-floating currency of meaning. The value of each word arises out of the exchange. The lexicographer abstracts a meaning from that exchange, which is then set within the conventions of the dictionary definition.
Answer & solution
- A
Dictionary definitions are like ‘gold standards’-artificial, theoretical and dogmatic. Actual meaning of words is their free-exchange value.
- B
Language is already slippery; given this, accounting for ‘meaning is use’ will only exasperate the problem. That is why lexicographers ’fix’ meaning.
Meaning is dynamic; definitions are static. The ‘meaning in use’ theory helps us understand that definitions of words are culled from their meaning in exchange and use and not vice versa.
- D
The meaning of words in dictionaries is clear, fixed and less dangerous and ambiguous than the meaning that arises when words are exchanged between people.
The main points in the précis are:
- The meaning of a word is often ambiguous and it is only from examining its use in real life that we can come to an understanding of the meaning of that word – this is the ‘meaning in use’ doctrine.
- The dictionary meaning of a word on the other hand, is ‘fixed’ by the lexicographer who derives its meaning from certain exchanges.
- The ‘meaning in use’ approach to words is a fluid one that leaves it to the usage of words whereas the dictionary approach to words fixes the meaning of words from the usage of the words.
Option 1 is incorrect. The précis makes a comparison between the two approaches and suggests that the ‘meaning in use’ approach makes more sense. However, it does not state that the ‘actual’ meaning of words is to be decided by free-exchange alone and not by references. Eliminate option 1.
Option 2 is inaccurate. The précis favours the flexible approach to the meaning of words and not the fixed one. Eliminate option 2.
Option 3 is correct. It sums up the précis accurately by stating that the meaning of words is to be derived from their usage and that this approach is unfortunately reversed in the dictionary use where usage is observed only to “fix” meaning. Retain option 3.
Option 4 is incorrect. The précis clearly favours the ‘meaning in use’ approach to the dictionary one. Eliminate option 4.
Hence, the correct answer is option 3.