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Stenka25 Posted 11 years ago
Vocabulary

Pronoun problems

pronoun problems
The passage below is from ‘the Blank Slate’ by Steven Pinker.

http://evolbiol.ru/blankslate/blankslate.htm

But it is the doctrine of the Noble Savage that has been most mercilessly debunked by the new evolutionary thinking. A thoroughly noble anything is an unlikely product of natural selection, because in the competition among genes for representation in the next generation, noble guys tend to finish last. Conflicts of interest are ubiquitous among living things, since two animals cannot both eat the same fish or monopolize the same mate. To the extent ?that social motives are adaptations ?that maximize copies of the genes ?that produced ?them, ?they should be designed to prevail in such conflicts, and one way to prevail is to neutralize the competition.


In this passage I want to know what the five underlined words stand for.
I have made my answers.

?that : ‘that’ means ‘to which’ and ‘which’ refers to ‘the extent’
?that : ‘that’ refers to ‘adaptations’
?that : ‘that’ refers to ‘the genes’
?them : ‘them’ refers to ‘social motives’
?they : ‘they’ refers to ‘the genes’

Can you check it out for me?
Regards.
  

Top answer

" I agree with 1, 2 and 3.

  • " I agree with 1, 2 and 3.
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2 Answers
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4: "them" refers to "adaptations."
5: "they" refers to "social motives."

I agree with 1, 2 and 3.
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Thanks a lot, teechr.

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