Which one of the following is NOT the reason for the difficulty in estimating the number of languages of the world?
- (a)New languages continue to be discovered
- (b)There are still unexplored regions
- (c)New languages are considered a dialect of a known language
- (d)People who speak the language do not claim their language
Correct — D, people who speak the language do not claim their language. The passage never says speakers refuse to claim their language; it says almost the reverse — that many such peoples are bilingual or multilingual and converse with outsiders in a lingua franca, so a distinct ethnic language can go unnoticed. Because option (d) is nowhere given as a reason, it is the correct pick for a 'NOT a reason' question.
- (a)New languages continue to be discovered — This IS given as a reason — the passage opens with 'A few new languages do continue to be discovered', so it is a stated cause of the difficulty and cannot be the 'NOT' answer.
- (b)There are still unexplored regions — This restates 'as unexplored regions of the world begin to be opened up', a stated reason, so it is not the exception being asked for.
- (c)New languages are considered a dialect of a known language — This matches 'similarities... make the investigators assume that what they have found is just a dialect', a stated reason, so it is not the answer.
A 'NOT / except' reading-comprehension item — three options paraphrase reasons actually stated in the passage, and the odd one out, with no support in the text, is the answer.
No directly related past PYQ was found.
- practice — not a real PYQ
A passage says a bird is hard to count because it migrates, hides in dense forest, and looks like a related species. Which is NOT given as a reason it is hard to count?
- (a)It migrates
- (b)It hides in dense forest
- (c)It resembles a related species
- (d)It has a very short lifespan
Answer(d) It has a very short lifespan — the other three are stated in the passage; a short lifespan is never mentioned, so it is the odd one out.
- practice — not a real PYQ
In a 'NOT / EXCEPT' comprehension question, the correct option is the one that —
- (a)appears first in the passage
- (b)is not supported by any line in the passage
- (c)is the longest option
- (d)repeats a keyword from the question
Answer(b) is not supported by any line in the passage — 'NOT'/'except' items ask for the option the text does not back.