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passage1：文学作品嵌入城市描述
passage2：古代戏剧的历史
passage3：Save EndangeredLanguage拯救濒危语言（文化类）
“Obviously we must do some serious rethinking of ourpriorities, lest linguistics go down in history as the only science thatpresided obviously over the disappearance of 90percent of the very field towhich it is dedicated. “-Michael Krauss, “The World’s Languages in Crisis ”.
A
Ten years ago Michael Krauss sent a shudder through the discipline oflinguistics with his prediction that half the 6,000 or so languages spoken inthe world would cease to be uttered within a century. Unless scientists andcommunity leaders directed a worldwide effort to stabilize the decline of locallanguages, he warned, nine tenths of the linguistic diversity of humankindwould probably be doomed to extinction. Krauss’sprediction was little more than an educated guess, but other respectedlinguists had been clanging out similar alarms. Keneth L. Hale of theMassachusetts Institute of Technology noted in the same journal issue thateight languages on which he had done fieldwork had since passed intoextinction. A 1990 survey in Australia found that 70 of the 90 survivingAboriginal languages were no longer used regularly by all age groups. The samewas true for all but 20 of the 175 Native American languages spoken orremembered in the US., Krauss told a congressional panel in 1992.
B
Many experts in the field mourn the loss of rare languages, for severalreasons. To start, there is scientific self-interest: some of the most basicquestions in linguistics have to do with the limits of human speech, which arefar from fully explored. Many researchers would like to know which structuralelements of grammar and vocabulary—if any—are truly universal and probably therefore hardwiredinto the human brain. Other scientists try to reconstruct ancient migrationpatterns by comparing borrowed words that appear in otherwise unrelatedlanguages. In each of these cases, the wider the portfolio of languages youstudy, the more likely you are to get the right answers.
C
Despite the near constant buzz in linguistics about endangered languages over thepast 10 years, the field has accomplished depressingly little. “You would think that there would be some organizedresponse to this dire situation,” someattempt to determine which language can be saved and which should b edocumented before they disappear, says Sarah G. Thomason, a linguist at theUniversity of Michigan at Ann Arbor. “But thereisn’tany such effort organized in theprofession. It is only recently that it has become fashionable enough to workon endangered languages.”Six years ago, recalls Douglas H. Whalen ofYale University, “when I asked linguists who wasraising moneyto deal with these problems, I mostly got blank stares.”So Whalen and a few other linguists founded theEndangered Languages Fund. In the five years to 2001 they were able to collectonly $80,000 for research grants. A similar foundation in England, directed byNicholas Ostler, has raised just $8,000 since 1995.
D
But there are encouraging signs that the field has turned a corner. TheVolkswagen Foundation, a German charity, just issued its second round of grantstotaling more than $2 million. It has created a multimedia archive at theMaxPlanck Institute for Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands that can houserecordings, grammars, dictionaries and other data on endangered languages. Tofill the archive, the foundation has dispatched field linguists to documentAweti (100 or so speakers in Brazil), Ega (about 300 speakers in Ivory Coast),Waima’a (a few hundred speakers in East Timor),and a dozen or so other languages unlikely to survive the century. The FordFoundation has also edged into the arena. Its contributions helped toreinvigorate a master-apprentice program created in 1992 byLeanne Hinton ofBerkeley and Native Americans worried about the imminent demise of about 50indigenous languages in California. Fluent speakers receive $3,000 to teach ayounger relative (who is also paid) their native tongue through 360 hours ofshared activities, spread over six months. So far about 5 teams have completedthe program, Hinton says, transmitting at least some knowledge of 25 languages.“It’s too early to call this languagerevitalization,”Hinton admits. “In California the death rate of elderly speakers willalways be greater than the recruitment rate of young speakers. But at least weprolong the survival of the language.”That willgive linguists more time to record these tongues before they vanish.
E
But the master-apprentice approach hasn’t caughton outside the U.S., and Hinton’s effort is a drop in the sea. At least 440languages have been reduced to a mere handful of elders, according to theEthnologue, a catalogue of languages produced by the Dallas-based group SILInternational thatcomes closest to global coverage. For the vast majority ofthese languages, there is little or no record of their grammar, vocabulary,pronunciation or use in daily life. Even if a language has been fullydocumented, all that remains once it vanishes from active use is a fossilskeleton, a scattering of features that the scientist was lucky and astuteenough to capture. Linguists may be able to sketch an outline of the forgottenlanguage and fix its place on the evolutionary tree, but little more. “How did people start conversations and talk to babies?Howdid husbands and wives converse?”Hinton asks.“Those are the first things you want to learn when youwant to revitalize the language.”
F
But there is as yet no discipline of “conservationlinguistics, ”as there is forbiology. Almost everystrategy tried so far has succeeded in some places but failed in others, andthere seems to be no way to predict with certainty what will work where. Twentyyears ago in New Zealand, Maori speakers set up “languagenests,”in which preschoolers were immersed in thenative language. Additional Maori-only classes were added as the childrenprogressed through elementary and secondary school. A similar approach wastried in Hawaii, with some success—the numberof native speakers has stabilized at 1,000 or so, reports Joseph E. Grimes ofSIL International, who is working on Oahu. Students can now get instruction inHawaiian all the way through university.
G
One factor that always seems to occur in the demise of a language is that thespeakers begin to have collective doubts about the usefulness of languageloyalty. Once they start regarding their own language as inferior to themajority language, people stop using it for all situations. Kids pick up on theattitude andprefer the dominant language. In many cases, people don’t notice until they suddenly realize that their kidsnever speak the language, even at home. This is how Cornish and some dialectsof Scottish Gaelic is still only rarely used for daily home life in Ireland, 80years after the republic was founded with Irish as its first official language.
H
Linguists agree that ultimately, the answer to the problem of languageextinction is multilingualism. Even uneducated people can learn severallanguages, as long as they start as children. Indeed, most people in the worldspeak more than one tongue, and in places such as Cameroon (279 languages),Papua New Guinea (823) and India (387) it is common to speak three or fourdistinct languages and a dialect or two as well. Most Americans and Canadians,to the west of Quebec, have a gut reaction that anyone speaking another languagein front of them is committing an immoral act. You get the same reaction inAustralia and Russia. It is no coincidence that these are the areas wherelanguages are disappearing the fastest. The first step in saving dyinglanguages is to persuade the world’smajorities to allow the minorities among them to speak with their own voices.
Questions 27-33
The reading passage has eight paragraphs, A-H
Choose the correct heading for paragraphs A-H from the list below.Write thecorrect number, i-xi, in boxes 27-33 on your answer sheet.
List of Headings
i data consistency needed for language the SI TER
ii Solution for dying out language
iii positive gains for protection
iv minimum requirement for saving a language
v Potential threat to minority language
vi Value of minority language to linguists.
vii native language program launched
viii Subjective doubts as a negative factor
ix Practise in several developingcountries
x Value of minority language to linguists.
xi government participation in language field
27 Paragraph A
28 Paragraph B
29Paragraph D
30Paragraph E
31Paragraph F
32Paragraph G
33Paragraph H
Questions 34-38
Use the information in the passage to match the people (listed A-F) withopinions or deeds below. Write the appropriate letters A-F in boxes 34-38 onyour answer sheet.
A Nicholas Ostler
B Michael Krauss
C Joseph E. Grimes
D Sarah G. Thomason
E Keneth L. Hale
F Douglas H. Whalen
34 Reported language conservation practice in Hawaii
35 Predicted that many languages would disappear soon
36 Experienced languages die out personally
37 Raised language fund in England
38 Not enough effort on saving until recent work
Questions 39-40
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
Write your answers in boxes 39-40 on your answer sheet.
39 What is purpose of master-apprentice program sponsored by The FordFoundation?
A Teach children how to speak
B Revive endangered language
C Preserve endanger red language
D Increase communication between students
40 What should majority language speaker should do according to the lastparagraph?
A They should teach their children endangered language
B They should learn at least four languages
C They should show their loyalty to a dying language
D They should be more tolerant to minority language speaker
答案
27 v, 28 x, 29 iii， 30 i， 31vii， 32 viii， 33 ii
34 C 35 B 36 E 37 A 38. D 39.C 40.D
