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Difficulty: Very hardEmphatic Stress

In the sentence below, the word written in CAPITAL LETTERS carries emphatic stress:

The archaeological team RIGOROUSLY excavated the ancient ruins near the oasis last spring.

Which of the following questions is the statement above an answer to?

  1. A
    Did the geological team rigorously excavate the ancient ruins near the oasis last spring?
  2. Did the archaeological team carelessly excavate the ancient ruins near the oasis last spring?Answer
  3. C
    Did the archaeological team rigorously survey the ancient ruins near the oasis last spring?
  4. D
    Did the archaeological team rigorously excavate the ancient ruins near the oasis last winter?

Answer

The statement is an answer to the question questioning whether the archaeological team carelessly excavated the ancient ruins near the oasis last spring.
In Oral English and contrastive stress analysis, emphatic stress on a specific word indicates that the statement is correcting or emphasizing that particular piece of information against a direct contrast. The capitalized word 'RIGOROUSLY' specifies the manner of excavation. The question asking if the team 'carelessly' excavated the ruins directly challenges this manner adverb while preserving every other lexical and grammatical element of the sentence ('the archaeological team', 'excavated', 'the ancient ruins near the oasis', 'last spring').

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Identify the word bearing emphatic stress in the given statement.
The word 'RIGOROUSLY' is written in capital letters, indicating that it carries emphatic (contrastive) stress.
Emphatic stress highlights specific contrastive information, signaling that the speaker is correcting or emphasizing that precise detail.
2
Determine the syntactic function and semantic role of the stressed word.
'RIGOROUSLY' is an adverb of manner describing how the excavation was carried out.
The contrastive question must specifically challenge or ask about the manner of the action.
3
Evaluate the options to find the question that contradicts ONLY the stressed word while keeping all other sentence components identical.
The question asking if the team 'carelessly' excavated the ruins contradicts 'RIGOROUSLY' and leaves the subject, verb, direct object, location, and time untouched.
Emphatic stress rules require the correct question to differ solely in the element corresponding to the stressed word.

Key Concept

Emphatic Stress and Contrastive Focus
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Topics

Emphatic Stress

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