hard · GRE Verbal

Passage: In many songbird species, individuals reared in acoustic isolation still develop a rudimentary song, but one that is abnormal in its finer structure; only birds exposed to a tutor during a sensitive early window acquire the species-typical form. Researchers long read this as evidence that the template for song is largely innate and that experience merely fine-tunes it. A dissenting group notes, however, that the 'isolate' song, though produced without a model, is not random: it drifts, over generations of isolated birds, toward the normal song. If a purely innate template governed development, they argue, such directional recovery across generations would be difficult to explain. Which of the following best describes the function of the last sentence? (A) It concedes a limitation in the dissenting group's own position (B) It supplies the reasoning by which the dissenters convert an observation into an objection (C) It introduces a third interpretation distinct from both prior views (D) It restates the innate-template hypothesis in stronger terms (E) It offers an experimental prediction that has yet to be tested

1. It candidly concedes an important limitation lodged within the dissenting group's own stated position
2. It supplies the reasoning by which the dissenters convert an observation into an objection
3. It introduces a genuinely third interpretation distinct from both of the prior views
4. It restates the original innate-template hypothesis in noticeably stronger, firmer terms
5. It offers a specific experimental prediction that has as yet not been tested

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