問題詳情
42-46No student of a foreign language needs to be told that grammar is complex. By changing word sequences or tenses andby adding a range of auxiliary verbs and suffixes, we are able to communicate tiny differences in meaning. We can turn astatement into a question, state whether an action has taken place or is going to take place soon, and make other changesin the structure to create differences in meaning. This complexity is not specific to widespread languages like English.All languages, even those of primitive tribes, have clever grammatical components. The Cherokee pronoun system, forexample, can distinguish between ‘you and I,’ ‘several other people and I’ and ‘you, another person and I.’ In English, allthese meanings are summed up in one, simple pronoun ‘we’. Grammar is universal and plays a part in every language, nomatter how widespread it is. In other words, all languages, whether they are spoken by a few people or a lot of people,contain grammar. The question which has confused many linguists is – who created grammar?At first, it would appear that this question is impossible to answer. To find out how grammar is created, someone needsto be present at the time of a language’s creation, documenting its emergence. Many historical linguists are able to tracemodern complex languages back to earlier languages. But in order to answer the question of how complex languages areactually formed, the researcher needs to observe how languages are started from scratch. Amazingly, however, this ispossible.Some of the most recent languages developed due to the Atlantic slave trade. At that time, slaves from a number ofdifferent ethnicities were forced to work together under colonial rule. Because they had no opportunity to learn eachother’s languages, they developed a language which was called a pidgin. The pidgin was a series of words copied fromthe language of the landowner. It had little grammar, and in many cases it was difficult for a listener to understand whenan event happened, and who did what to whom. The pidgin began to turn into a complex language when slave childrenstarted to use it while they were learning their mother tongue. These children did not simply copy the words that theirelders used. Instead, they adapted these words to create a new, expressive language. This language included standardizedword orders and grammatical markers.
【題組】 42. The following is mentioned as a way of conveying differences in meaning EXCEPT
(A) changing word order.
(B) adding auxiliary verbs.
(C) using different tenses.
(D) using complex words.
參考答案
答案：D
難度：困難0.259259
統計：A(2),B(8),C(9),D(7),E(0)