GRE Reading Comprehension
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Source: Kaplan
Sanskrit grammarian Pānini (c. 520–460 BC) is the earliest known linguist, often acknowledged as the founder of linguistics. Most renowned for formulating the 3,959 rules of Sanskrit morphology in an extended text that is still in use today, Pānini devised a grammar of Sanskrit that is technical and highly systematized. Inherent in its analytic approach are the concepts of the phoneme, the morpheme, and the root, only documented by Western linguists some two millennia later. His rules fully describe Sanskrit morphology without any redundancy. A consequence of his grammar's focus on brevity is its highly unintuitive structure, reminiscent of contemporary "machine language," as opposed to "human readable" programming languages. Feinstein's scholarship contends that Pānini's sophisticated logical rules and techniques have been widely influential in both ancient and modern linguistics. Conversely, Wherry claims that South Indian linguist Tolkāppiyar (3rd century BC) was a more significant author of linguistic theory. Tolkāppiyar wrote the grammar text of Tamil, which is also in use today.
Which one of the following can be correctly inferred from the passage?
- A Inherent in Tolkāppiyar 's systemized approach are such linguistic concepts as the phoneme, the morpheme, and the root.
- B Linguistic inquiry is pursued by a wide variety of language specialists, who may not be in harmonious agreement.
- C Eastern linguists and Western linguists developed divergent concepts of the phoneme, the morpheme and the root.
- D Western linguists disagreed with the earliest linguists who categorized Sanskrit and Tamil.
- E Western linguists were much later than Eastern linguists in formulating basic linguistic theories.