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Difficulty: MediumEmphatic Stress

Analyze the statement below containing a capitalized word that indicates emphatic stress. Complete the contrastive question that elicits this statement by filling in the blank with a word that contrasts directly with the emphasized word.

Answer:Statement: The archivist preserved the RARE manuscripts in the climate-controlled vault.

Question: Did the archivist preserve the 【common】 manuscripts in the climate-controlled vault?

Answer

The blank should be filled with a contrasting adjective such as 'common' or 'ordinary' that replaces the capitalized word 'RARE'.
In Oral English emphatic stress patterns, a capitalized word receives primary stress to contrast with or contradict a specific piece of information presented in a prior question. In this item, 'RARE' is stressed. Therefore, the contrastive question must ask about manuscripts that are not rare (e.g., 'common', 'ordinary', or 'modern'), while leaving all other parts of the statement unchanged.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Identify the word carrying primary emphatic stress in the given statement.
The word 'RARE' is capitalized, indicating that it carries the primary emphatic stress.
Emphatic stress highlights the specific information being asserted or corrected in response to a contrastive question.
2
Determine which element of the statement is being emphasized.
The adjective 'RARE' modifies 'manuscripts'.
The emphasis is specifically on the nature or type of the manuscripts, not on the archivist, the action of preserving, or the vault location.
3
Formulate a contrastive question that targets only the emphasized word.
The question must keep all other sentence elements identical ('archivist', 'preserve', 'manuscripts', 'climate-controlled vault') while substituting a contrasting descriptor for 'RARE'.
An emphatic stress statement directly contradicts an incorrect assumption made in the preceding question regarding the stressed element.

Key Concept

Emphatic Stress and Contrastive Questions
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Topics

Emphatic Stress

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