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Question

Difficulty: HardMust Be True / Most Strongly Supported

An epigrapher examining monumental inscriptions from an ancient provincial capital established the following criteria regarding the city's recovered public decrees:

• Any decree inscribed on basalt was commissioned directly by the royal court unless it was an agricultural land transfer.
• No decree commissioned directly by the royal court contains dialectical idioms from the northern hill country.
• Some decrees containing dialectical idioms from the northern hill country bear the personal seal of the city governor.
• All agricultural land transfers bear the personal seal of the city governor.

If the epigrapher's statements are true, which of the following statements must also be true?

  1. A
    Any agricultural land transfer bearing the personal seal of the city governor was not commissioned directly by the royal court.
  2. B
    Every public decree that bears the personal seal of the city governor is inscribed on basalt.
  3. Any decree inscribed on basalt that contains dialectical idioms from the northern hill country is an agricultural land transfer.Answer
  4. D
    Commission by the royal court is a required condition for any public decree to be inscribed on basalt.
  5. E
    Most public decrees containing dialectical idioms from the northern hill country were composed by scribes outside the royal capital.

Answer

Any decree inscribed on basalt that contains dialectical idioms from the northern hill country is an agricultural land transfer.
According to the premises, any inscription on basalt is a royal commission unless it is an agricultural land transfer, which is logically equivalent to stating that if a basalt inscription is not a royal commission, it must be an agricultural transfer. The second premise establishes that royal commissions never contain northern hill country idioms; thus, by contraposition, any inscription containing northern idioms is not a royal commission. Therefore, any inscription that is on basalt and contains northern idioms cannot be a royal commission and must be an agricultural land transfer.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Formalize the conditional relationships stated in the stimulus.
Basalt AND NOT Agricultural Transfer implies Royal Commission; Royal Commission implies NOT Northern Idiom (contrapositive: Northern Idiom implies NOT Royal Commission); Some Northern Idiom have Governor Seal; Agricultural Transfer implies Governor Seal.
Translating multi-premise arguments into symbolic conditional logic prevents reasoning errors.
2
Synthesize the conditions for a decree that is both on basalt and contains northern hill country idioms.
Having northern idioms strictly guarantees that the decree is NOT a royal commission. Applying this to the first premise (Basalt AND NOT Royal Commission implies Agricultural Transfer), the decree must be an agricultural land transfer.
Chaining the contrapositive of the second premise into the conditional exception of the first premise yields a deductively valid conclusion.
3
Evaluate the answer choices to locate this direct logical deduction.
The statement asserting that any basalt decree containing northern idioms is an agricultural transfer matches the deduction exactly.
Must Be True questions require a choice that is logically guaranteed by the premises without external assumptions.

Key Concept

Deductive Conditional Chaining and Contrapositive Synthesis
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Topics

Must Be True / Most Strongly Supported

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