The writer's grimoire, part 1 Trivia Quiz

Answer: True

A clause represents a portion of a sentence. Dependent, or subordinate clauses, are those that are contingent upon another part of a sentence. In this example, saying "because she is an inventor" on its own would be senseless, as we have no relevant context to apply the sentence's content to. Thus, "She works in a scientific laboratory, because she is an inventor," would represent a fully formed sentence. Accordingly, "She works in a scientific laboratory" functions as an independent clause, as we can derive the entire situation from that single line, i.e., we know that she works in such a laboratory, which is a logical conclusion to arrive at given the information provided.

Answer: Conditional statement

A conditional statement stipulates that a scenario or situation results from a set of conditions. Thus, the if-then statement above says that when something has congruent segments, the segments must have equal measures. This sentence, in particular, refers to the geometric state of congruity, which applies when two lines or line segments are equal in length.

Answer: Converse statement

A converse statement is achieved when a conditional statement ("If segments are congruent, then they have equal measures") is reversed so that the secondary clause comes first. In rational statements, especially in mathematics, but also grammatically, this swapping should change the sentence's structure, but not its overall meaning or implication.

Answer: Inverse statement

The inverse statement says that the original conditional statement is false in its entirety. In this, the word not, or the negative modifier, is inserted into both the if and the then clauses, forcing each to represent the "inverse" of its original meaning.

However, it is important to note that the conditional statement's structure remains the same. That is to say, while the overall implication of the statement may change, the first clause remains as the first clause, and the second clause remains as the second.

Therefore, this statement, geometrically speaking, is saying that line segments cannot be congruent if the lengths are not equal.

Answer: Contrapositive statement

Literally, the contrapositive is the negative converse statement, or the original conditional statement modified negatively, with the clauses swapped. Whereas the converse alone swaps the order of the clauses, and the inverse modifies the conditional phrase, the contrapositive provides for each action.

In addition, the rule of rationality -- that the statement should still be sensible even when modified and swapped -- still applies. Throughout these four questions, the statement has altered considerably, however, each statement (the conditional, converse, inverse and contrapositive) still makes logical sense when evaluated as is.

Answer: Give a sense of extreme isolation.

The entirety of the text is not provided, thus forcing you to derive the meaning based solely on the language being used.

The first incorrect answer would be that of the physical feeling of an icy breeze. Though the howls of coyotes are often associated with a gusting wind on a winter night, this particular line of text did not make any reference to this idea. Furthermore, the sentence gives no description of what the night may be like, meaning that the assertion of the existence of a breeze would be a claim without foundation.

Personification would have entailed that the hills had some characteristic of humanness, rather than providing a location for an action taken in the sentence. Thus, personification would be inappropriate to the context. Finally, while the sentence does serve to discuss the geography of the story, the specified portion of the sentence does not address this.

The reason the sense of isolation applies is because the phrase is expressing a scenario in which the character, or "the boy," is surrounded by nothing but the coyotes, and the night serves as a symbolic representation of loneliness and isolation.

Answer: anaphora

The answer is of course an anaphora, or a rhetorical device in which a successive set of clauses is begun with the same word, phrase or sound. In this example, the starting word is always "come". This technique is often used to emphasize a point, or to elicit a certain emotion, such as passion.

This is not unique to writing or literature. In speaking and linguistics, the anaphora can be an effective strategy for compelling listeners to do a certain action or give heed to a certain idea.

Answer: True

Gallows humor was rationalized by Freud in 1927, when he postulated that the ego, or the individual, refuses to acknowledge the severity of its situation. The individual thus uses gallows humor to make light of the problem, in denying that the situation is truly fatal or inevitable.

Answer: Stochastic context

Grammatical theories that fall under the umbrella of "stochastic contexts" are generally those that assign individual meaning to each word. That is, within any given sentence or situation, a word will have a certain function determined by the context of that sentence, and on how that word is connected to the rest of the sentence, both logically and structurally.

Accordingly, a sentence can be reduced and understood once the probabilistic relations are understood in context. An example of this theory would be Optimality theory.

Answer: Symbolism

It is of course symbolism, or the art of portraying a concept through reference to a definite object or person. This is often a method or tool by which authors seek to make a philosophical point or claim without breaking the flow of a fictitious story.