四川大學2012考博英語真題及答案詳解

四川大學2012考博英語真題及答案詳解

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1）Signhas become a scientific hot button. Only in the past 20 years have specialistsin language study realized that signed languages are unique—a speech of thehand. They offer a new way to probe how the brain generates and understandslanguage, and throw new light on an old scientific controversy: whetherlanguage, complete with grammar, is something that we are born With, or whetherit is a learned behavior. The current interest in sign language has roots inthe pioneering work of one rebel teacher at Gallaudet Universityin Washington, D. C., the world’s only liberal arts university for deaf people.
When Bill Stokoe went to Gallaudet to teach English, the school enrolled him ina course in signing. But Stokoe noticed something odd: among themselves,students signed differently from his classroom teacher.
Stokoe had been taught a sort of gestural code, each movement of the handsrepresenting a word in English. At the time, American Sign Language (ASL) wasthought to be no more than a form of pidgin English (混雜英語). ButStokoe believed the “hand talk” his students used looked richer. He wondered:Might deaf people actually: have a genuine language? And could that language beunlike any other on Earth? It was 1955, when even deaf people dismissed theirsigning as “substandard”. Stokoe’s idea was academic heresy (異端邪說).
It is 37 years later. Stokoe—now devoting his time to writing and editing booksand journals and to producing video materials on ASL and the deaf culture—ishaving lunch at a cafe near the Gallaudet campus and explaining how he starteda revolution. For decades educators fought his idea that signed languages arenatural languages like English, French and Japanese. They assumed language mustbe based on speech, the modulation (調節) ofsound. But sign language is based on the movement of hands, the modulation ofspace. “What I said,” Stokoe explains, “is that language is not mouthstuff—it’s brain stuff.”
21. The study of sign language is thought to be _____C___.
A) a new way to look at the learning of language
B) a challenge to traditional, views on the nature of language
C) an approach: to simplifying the grammatical structure of a language