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  3. Today the study of language in our schools is somewhat confused. It is the most traditional of scholastic subjects being taught

Today the study of language in our schools is somewhat confused. It is the most traditional of scholastic subjects being taught

admin2009-04-27  71
问题     Today the study of language in our schools is somewhat confused. It is the most traditional of scholastic subjects being taught in a time when many of our traditions no longer fit our needs. You to whom these pages are addressed speak English and are therefore in a worse case than any other literate people.
    People pondering the origin of language for the first time usually arrive at the conclusion that it developed gradually as a system of conventionalised grunts, hisses, and cries and must have been a very simple affair in the beginning. But when we observe the language behavior of what we regard as primitive cultures, we find it strikingly elaborate and complicated. Stefansson, the explorer, said that "In order to get along reasonably well an Eskimo must have at the tip of his tongue a vocabulary of more than 10,000 words, much larger than the active vocabulary of an average businessman who speaks English. Moreover these Eskimo words are far more highly inflected than those of any of the well-known European languages, for a single noun can be spoken or written in several hundred different forms, each having a precise meaning different from that of any other. The forms of the verbs are even more numerous. The Eskimo language is, therefore, one of the most difficult in the world to learn, with the result that almost no traders or explorers have even tried to learn it. Consequently there has grown up, an intercourse between Eskimos and whites, a jargon similar to the pidgin English used in China, with a vocabulary of from 300 to 600 uninflected words, most of them derived from Eskimo but some derived from English, Danish, Spanish, Hawaiian and other languages. It is this jargon which is usually referred to by travelers as ’the Eskimo language’. And Professor Thalbitzer of Copenhagen, who did take the trouble to learn Eskimo, seems to endorse the explorer’s view when he writes: "The language is polysynthetic. The grammar is extremely rich in flexional forms, the conjugation of a common verb ending. For the declension of a noun there are 150 suffixes (for dual and plural, local cases, and possessive flexion). The derivative endings effective in the vocabulary and the construction of sentences or sentence-like words a mount to at least 250. Not withstanding all these constructive peculiarities, the grammatical and synthetic system is remarkably concise and, in its own way, logical."
选项 A、spoken in English, Denmark, Spain, and Hawaii
B、less than the size of the language spoken by Eskimos
C、inestimable
D、irrelevant
答案B
解析 本题考查对文章细节内容的理解能力。在文章第二段中，一位探险家说到："In order to get along reasonably well an Eskimo must have at the tip of his tongue a vocabulary of more than 10,000 words"，即与爱斯基摩人交谈，必须掌握一万个以上的爱斯基摩词汇，而实际情况是，白人说的并非真正的European language，而是"an intercourse between Eskimos and whites，a jargon similar to the pidgin English used in China，with a vocabulary of from 300 to 600 uninflected words，most of them derived from Eskimo but some derived from English，Danish，Spanish，Hawaiian and other languages"．因此我们可知，白人所说的European language的实际词汇量与真正的European language的词汇量相比要小得多。
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