A transition question at the end of an argument tests how its final sentence connects to earlier ideas. Cover the choices and shrink the surrounding ideas, looking farther back when the argument has several parts. Name the link: do the ideas continue, show a cause and result, contrast, or follow a time order? Then ask how the last sentence uses that link. Swap in each phrase’s plain meaning, because phrases can show the same link but do different jobs.
Hints
- Hint 1
Start with the scholars’ view, then shrink the evidence on either side of “Yet.” What does each piece of evidence suggest about that view?
- Hint 2
Look for the link between a ruler’s name and a version’s use in the ceremony records. How does the detail about much later copies affect what manuscript dates can tell us?
- Hint 3
Read the final claim together with the ceremony evidence. What does the final sentence do with the facts, and what relationship would the transition need to name?
Step-by-step
Trace the evidence to the final judgment
Step 1Shrink the older view and its support
The dates offer some support for that view, so let's track how the evidence develops to find the transition. What is the scholars’ view in a few words? The oldest copy is closest to an original, and scribes later changed the names. Since the oldest manuscript does name the earliest ruler, the dates fit that reading.
- Step 2
Explain what the ceremony records add
What changes after Yet? The records associate each named ruler with the period when that version was performed, and some much later copies retain names from earlier ceremonial settings. Later copies can keep older names, so a copy’s date alone can’t explain which ruler it names. The link to ceremonies gives a reason for choosing particular names, which supports deliberate adaptation rather than copying error.
- Step 3
Predict the transition’s job
The final claim, the variation is better understood, explains why the names differ. What job should the transition do? It should introduce a judgment drawn from the evidence. Even so means despite that, but the ceremony records support the judgment rather than working against it. In other words means to restate the same idea, but the judgment goes beyond reporting what the records say.
- Step 4
Test the remaining phrases
By the same token means for the same reason. It introduces a separate point based on a reason already given. On balance means after weighing the evidence on both sides, which fits the comparison in better understood as deliberate adaptation to ceremonial context than as copying error. Choice D.