A student notes question with a two-part goal tests whether one sentence does both jobs the student names. Read the goal first and name both parts of the goal, including any limit on the claim. Set aside sentences that miss part of the goal, even if they're true. Then check the notes: a reason should explain why the inference makes sense, and a limit should say what the evidence can't prove. Extra detail doesn't make up for a missing part of the goal.
Hints
- Hint 1
In the goal, separate the explanation from the limit on the claim. Both parts need support from the notes.
- Hint 2
What guides the choice of an epithet? Read the fourth note, then connect it to Parry’s account in the fifth.
- Hint 3
Reread the last note and ask what the written versions can and can't tell you. How should that affect the strength of the claim about oral composition?
Step-by-step
Connect the pattern and respect the limit
Step 1Name both parts of the goal
Split the goal at while avoiding a claim the evidence cannot support. What does that add to the request for an explanation? We need both a reason and a limit: how the epithet pattern points to oral composition, and what it can't prove.
- Step 2
Connect variation to composing
The fourth note says an epithet often depends on the space available in a line’s meter rather than on details of the immediate scene. Why would that help someone compose during a performance? Meter is a line’s pattern of beats, so a singer with several phrases for one character can pick the one that fits and compose without inventing every phrase on the spot. That fits Parry’s account of singers composing during performances, but the version saying epithets reflect each scene gets the reason wrong.
- Step 3
Find the limit on the inference
What can't this pattern tell us? The surviving versions cannot establish the exact wording of earlier performances, so the inference isn't proof of exact past words. The claim that performers transmitted the poems word for word goes beyond that limit. The version with written editors says they created the pattern, which the notes don't say.
- Step 4
Match both parts of the goal in one sentence
The sentence with variation according to metrical need links the pattern to Parry’s flexible formulaic repertoire, a set of ready phrases singers could choose from while composing. Its ending says the surviving versions can't reveal earlier performances’ exact wording, so it makes the inference without claiming more than the notes allow. Choice C.