CAT 2023 Slot 3 · VARC · Question 19

CAT 2023 Slot 3 previous year question on Odd One Out, with the answer and a step-by-step solution.

Odd One OutVerbal AbilityType in the answer (TITA)Medium

Five jumbled up sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5), related to a topic, are given below. Four of them can be put together to form a coherent paragraph. Identify the odd sentence and key in the number of that sentence as your answer.

1. Boa Senior, who lived through the 2004 tsunami, the Japanese occupation and diseases brought by British settlers, was the last native of the island chain who was fluent in Bo.

2. The indigenous population has been steadily collapsing since the island chain was colonised by British settlers in 1858 and used for most of the following 100 years as a colonial penal colony.

3. Taking its name from a now-extinct tribe, Bo is one of the 10 Great Andamanese languages, which are thought to date back to pre-Neolithic human settlement of southeast Asia.

4. The last speaker of an ancient tribal language has died in the Andaman Islands, breaking a 65,000 -year link to one of the world's oldest cultures.

5. Though the language has been closely studied by researchers of linguistic history, Boa Senior spent the last few years of her life unable to converse with anyone in her mother tongue.

Answer & solution

Answer: 2

Four sentences are about the death of the last Bo speaker.

Sentence 4 opens with the news: the last speaker of an ancient language has died.

Sentence 3 explains the language: Bo, one of the Great Andamanese languages.

Sentence 1 introduces Boa Senior, the last fluent speaker.

Sentence 5 closes: though researchers studied the language, she spent her last years unable to speak it with anyone. The sequence 4-3-1-5 is coherent.

Sentence 2 is about the collapse of the indigenous population under British colonial rule. It is related background, but it shifts from the language and its last speaker to population history, and no other sentence picks it up.

Shortcut: when four sentences focus on one person and one language, a sentence about a broader historical trend is the likely outlier.

Hence, the answer is 2.

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