2. 考研
  3. To all the world, nothing seems more completely American than the cowboy. Yet the truth is that the cowboy’s horse, clothes, and

To all the world, nothing seems more completely American than the cowboy. Yet the truth is that the cowboy’s horse, clothes, and

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问题 To all the world, nothing seems more completely American than the cowboy. Yet the truth is that the cowboy’s horse, clothes, and trade are all part of the rich heritage contributed by Mexico to her northern neighbor.
   Even the word cowboy is a translation of the Mexican term vaquero. The word cowboy was unknown to the American settlers who first headed west to texas in the 1820’s. These people thought of themselves as farmers. In fact, the only cattle most of them brought were a cow or two for milk and a yoke of oxen to draw their plows. It was their Mexican neighbors—the Tejanos whose herds had roamed the open ranges since the early 1700’s—who introduced them to cattle raising, taunght them to use the lariat, the branding iron, and the homed saddle, and showed them how to break the wild mustangs and round up the free-ranging longhorns. So well did the new Texans take to Tejano ways that soon you spoke fighin’ words if you referred to them as anything as ordinary as mere "farmers." They had been changed into saddle-proud ranchers.
   Later, as the cattle industry spread all over the West, its Mexican origins were largely forgotten. But even today the language of the rangeland clearly shows how great were the cowboy’s borrowings. Corral, pinto, palomino, mesquite, bronco, rodeo, mesa, canyon, arroyo, loco, plaza, fiesta, pronto—by the hundreds Mexican words slipped into English with only a change in accent. Borrowed "by ear," other words underwent weird alterations. From sabe came savvy, jaquima turned into hackamore, chaparajos was shortened to chaps, estampidawas converted into stampede, vamo semerged as vamoose, and the juzgado gave birth to hoosegow. Even the famed ten-gallon hat, got its name not from some Texan’s tall tale but from a Mexican song about a gaily decorated hat, or sombrero galoneado.
   In countless other ways the people of the United States are indebted to the Mexicans who once lived in the old Southwest. There were only seventy-five thousand of them when Mexico ceded the region to the United States, and these were scattered from the Gulf Coast in the east to the shores of the Pacific in the west. They had lived in the borderlands since 1598, more than twenty years before the Pilgrims sailed for the New World. In the course of more than 250 years they had left their mark on the land. Many of the western states in the United States still bear the lovely lyrical names the Mexican settlers first wrote upon their maps. So do countless rivers and mountains, and thousands of cities and towns—from Corpus Christi in Texas to all the Sans and Santas along the Pacific shore.
   Through trial and error, the rugged Mexicans had learned to survive and prosper in the dry, half-desert lanD. When English-speaking people poured into the region, the Spanish-speaking people shared their knowledge with the new settlers, making things much easier for them. Settlers in other parts of the United States did not have this advantage.
   In all the rest of the country, pioneers had to break their own trails. But those who headed west in gold rash days could follow the Santa Fe Trail from the Missouri to the Rockies. In the old settlements of New Mexico, the wagon trams could rest their oxen and replenish their supplies before moving on down the Old Spanish Trail on the Tucson-Yuma route.
   In the 1850s, army engineers were sent west to survey the railroad routes that would link East with West. The northern parties had to find their own way through vast stretches of little-explored territory but in the Southwest the surveyors merely remapped the trails that had been packed hard over the years by Mexican mule trains. Two major railroads—the Southern Pacific and the Santa Fe—and many main highways were built along the routes made by the early Spanish settlers when they first spread out into the new land.
   Early migrants from the East thought of the Southwest as a great desert, a land that had to be passed through, but was hardly to be settled upon. However, they changed their minds when they saw the rich green fields along the Rio Grande, fields that had been irrigated since the early 1600s. In time the newcomers were able to turn even desert into some of the most fertile farmland in all the nation.
   Water laws gave the new settlers some trouble at first. They tried to use a system under which the landowners along the banks of a stream controlled its waters. This system worked well in the water-rich East, but in the dry lands of the Southwest it gave the lucky more water than they needed, while others on higher ground got none at all. In time all the western states had to switch over to the Mexican way—sharing water rights among all the owners whose land could be irrigated.
   Western sheep farmers, too, owe a great debt to their forerunners. For the small flocks that the early Mexican settlers had brought to Santa Fe had multiplied into large herds by the time the United States took over the Southwest. New Mexico supplied sheep to ranges all over the country. With the sheep wentpastores, who still form a large percentage of the herdsmen in North America. Until the recent introduction of sheep clipping machines, sheepshearing was to a large extent a Mexican skill for which sheep ranchers in the States would bid eagerly.
   Mexicans have played an important part not only in cattle and sheep farming, but in mining as well. It was a Mexican who discovered the great Santa Rita copper deposit in New Mexico. Today, miners of Mexican descent still form a major part of the work force in most of the copper mines of the Southwest. In industry, farming, and countless other fields, the United States owes a great deal to her neighbor.
What is the purpose of this article, to demonstrate what Mexicans gave to the United States or how languages change and grow? Why?
选项
答案The purpose of this article is to demonstrate what Mexicans gave to the United States. In the first three paragraphs, the author demonstrated how American words are influenced by the Mexicans, but his point is to describe that Mexicans are of great importance in American culture. Moreover, in the following paragraphs, the author showed us how the Mexicans helped the Americans in the difficult times and how intelligent the Mexicans were when they cultivated a new land. These all add up to the fact that the purpose of this article is not about language.
解析 (文章仅在前三段描述了美国语言中的变化，这在全篇的结构中，这是作为墨西哥对美国的影响的一个方面，即文化方面，接下来，作者又展示了墨西哥对美国农业等方面的影响。这些方面组合在一起共同展示了文章的主题，即墨西哥对美国的影响。)
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