Passage Summary: Because an ancient language has words for cold weather but no word for the ocean, researchers conclude the speakers lived in a cold, landlocked area.

Conclusion: The original speakers of Proto-Indo-European likely inhabited a cold region far from any ocean.

Reasoning: The reconstructed language contains words for winter, snow, and wolves, but lacks a word for the sea.

Analysis: This argument commits the 'absence of evidence' fallacy by assuming that because we haven't found a word for 'sea,' the word never existed. To weaken this, look for an answer that provides a reason why a word might be missing from a reconstructed language even if the people lived near the water. Perhaps the word for 'sea' was lost over millennia, or perhaps they used a word that meant both 'large lake' and 'sea,' which confused the reconstruction. The goal is to show that the lack of a specific word in our current records doesn't prove the absence of the thing itself in their environment.