Mendocino

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Mendocino

by himu » Mon Jun 03, 2013 5:19 am
The origin of the place name "Mendocino," which today belongs to a county and a city in northern California, is rather murky. We can find a geographic feature named "Cape Mendocino" as early as 1587 on the maps of Ortelius. After his return from an expedition in 1602, Father Antonio de la Ascensión wrote, "There may be some curious person who may wish to know why this cape or point of land came to be named 'Mendocino." The reason is that when Don Antonio de Mendoza was viceroy of New Spain in 1542, he sent two ships to the Philippines. When they returned, the first land they saw was this Cape Mendocino, to which they gave the name in honor and remembrance of the viceroy."

This story endured and was repeated in a somewhat garbled fashion more than two centuries later by Duflot de Mofras. While no substantive evidence for the story has ever been found, this account has also never been conclusively disproved. Since the name apparently does not appear on maps until 1587, it is possible (and more plausible) that the cape was named for Lorenzo Suárez de Mendoza, viceroy of New Spain from 1580 to 1583. If one of the two viceroys was thus honored, the place name was created by the relatively rare method of using the adjective form of the personal name, a derivation comparable to that of Smithsonian or Wagnerian. In Argentina, a Mendocino is a person from the city of Mendoza. It is also not impossible that some European cartographer arbitrarily placed the name on the map. "Mendocino" is the oldest name of a cape that has survived the various phases of real and imaginary California geography, with the same spelling and in the same general location.
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The passage implies that

Don Antonio de Mendoza and Lorenzo Suárez de Mendoza were both born in Argentina.

Like "Mendocino," "Smithsonian" and "Wagnerian" are also place names.

In the sixteenth century, place names were always created by returning explorers who wanted to honor their leaders.

Father Antonio de la Ascensión was the first to write an account of how Cape Mendocino got its name

It was less likely in the sixteenth century that a place would be named after a ruler several decades in the past instead of a ruler from the more immediate past.
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Which of the following best describes the function of the second paragraph?

It provides evidence that demonstrates that an explanation given in the first paragraph may not be the only possible explanation.

It shows how the premises given in the first paragraph lead to a conclusion.

It brings together historical data that suggest a single answer to a question posed in the first paragraph

It debunks the myth established in the first paragraph, replacing it with an accurate representation.

It repeats different versions of the same story told in the first paragraph.
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Which of the following is most likely to come next were the passage to continue?

Duflot de Mofras was a nineteenth-century French diplomat and explorer who spent four years exploring the western coast of North America.

The study of place names is called toponymy, a word derived from the Greek for "place" and "name."

However, the name was not definitively identified with a cape at latitude 40° 27' north until Malaspina placed it on his map in 1791.

Simply selecting a name at random to apply to a certain geographic feature was a common practice among European cartographers during the sixteenth century.

Today, the city and county of Mendocino are popular tourist destinations, known for their dramatic sea views and idiosyncratic local culture.
Source: — Reading Comprehension |

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by bubbliiiiiiii » Tue Jun 04, 2013 3:26 am
BAD?

Could you please share source and OA?
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Pranay

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by himu » Tue Jun 04, 2013 4:13 am
E A C :(((

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by himu » Tue Jun 04, 2013 4:53 am
[spoiler]Veritas !

Correct answer: (E)

Keep in mind that this is an Inference problem. Only answer (E) is supported by the passage, which states that it is more plausible that a place name that first appears in 1587 was created in honor of a ruler from 1583 rather than one from 1542. (A) is incorrect because, though "Mendocino" is related to the Argentinean name "Mendoza," the passage never suggests that the viceroys were born in Argentina. There is no evidence to support answers (B), (C), or (D).


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Correct answer: (A)

This is a Method of Reasoning question. Only answer (A) contains an accurate description of the second paragraph, which contains neither a conclusion, a single answer, nor a debunking. It does offer alternate explanations for the phenomenon of the place name "Mendocino," but it does not repeat a story found in the first paragraph.

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Correct answer: (C)

Answer (C) offers the most continuity with the close of the second passage, setting up a contrast between the last sentence, which indicates that the name "Mendocino" historically floated among real and imaginary entities, and the next sentence, which nails the name "Mendocino" down to one particular geographical formation. Answers (A), (B), and (D) refer to topics that appear in the passage, but none of them provides a tight transition to the next idea. Answer (E) is out of scope, since the topic of the passage is the history of the name "Mendocino," not the contemporary tourist industry.
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