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  3. The creation of a universal language uniting all mankind is an idea that has interested scholars for several centuries. It is an

The creation of a universal language uniting all mankind is an idea that has interested scholars for several centuries. It is an

admin2012-08-05  39
问题      The creation of a universal language uniting all mankind is an idea that has interested scholars for several centuries. It is an exciting idea! Imagine a language which can break down the barriers that tend to separate the different peoples of the world. The idea has not been left to gather dust. Various attempts have been made to invent such a language. The most widely known invented language, Esperanto, has about one million speakers, but very few speakers use it as their everyday language. Considering that the world population is already over four billion, this is not a truly popular universal language. In fact, no invented language has ever been widely accepted.
     The suggestion has been made that a true universal language exists already. Margaret Mead, among others, recently proposed that sign language is the universal language pat excellence. According to this claim, sign language is not only universal, but easy to learn. It could, therefore, be used by anyone for world-wide communication.
     This proposal was made also by early writers on sign language, such as the Abbe de I’ Epee, the French priest who founded public education for the deaf late in the 18th century, and Remy Valade, who wrote the first grammar book on French Sign Language in 1854. These authors believed that sign language imitates objects and events and presents them as they occur in nature, just as an artist paints the scene in front of him.
     According to de. I’ Epee and Valade, there is one Sign Language, which is a natural language uniting deaf people everywhere in the world. They suggested that if hearing people learned to communicate in sign language, the world would have an excellent, ready-made universal language.
     However, even a brief look at the known sign languages of the world invalidates this contention. American Sign Language, British Sign Language, Japanese Sign Language, Danish Sign Language, and other sign languages differ from each other as much as spoken languages differ. Just like different spoken languages, different sign languages are mutually unintelligible. For instance, a deaf person from Britain, who knows only his own sign language, cannot understand two deaf Americans signing to each other in ASL.
     Today, linguists who study ASL believe that it is "natural" in the same sense that English, French, and Russian are natural languages. Every natural language plays an important role in the day-to-day life of the people who use it, providing a group of people with a means for communicating with each other as well as a means for passing on knowledge from generation to generation. Constantly changing, natural languages adapt to meet the new conditions and particular needs of subgroups of the community. It is through change and adapration that natural languages show their life.
     On the other hand, a language such as Esperanto, invented to be a universal system, lacks the community roots so identifiable in natural languages. With the form of the language determined at the time of its invention, such a language remains changeless. Like a plastic flower, it has only the appearance of life.  
The topic (theme) of the passage mainly concerns
选项 A、artificial language
B、natural language
C、universal language
D、sign language
答案C
解析 主旨题。文章第一段就提到:The creation of a universal language uniting all mankind is an idea that has interested scholars for several centuries. 答案为C。
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