Stokoe had been taught a sort of gestural code, each movement of the hands representing a word in English. At the time, American Sign Language (ASL) was thought to be no more than a form of pidgin English (混杂英语). But Stokoe believed the hand talk his students used looked richer. He wondered Might deaf people actually have a genuine language And could that language be unlike any other on Earth It was 1955, when even deaf people dismissed their signing as substandard. Stokoe’s idea was academic heresy (异端邪说).
It is 37 years later. Stokoe—now devoting his time to writing and editing books and journals and to producing video materials on ASL and the deaf culture—is having lunch at a café near the Gallaudet campus and explaining how he started a revolution. For decades educators fought his idea that signed languages are natural languages like English, French and Japanese. They assumed language must be based on speech, the modulation (调节) of sound. But sign language is based on the movement of hands, the modulation of space. What I said, Stokoe explains, is that language is not mouth stuff—it’s brain stuff.
21. The study of sign language is thought to be .
A) a new way to look at the learning of language
B) a challenge to traditional views on the nature of language
C) an approach to simplifying the grammatical structure of a language
D) an attempt to clarify misunderstanding about the origin of language
22. The present growing interest in sign language was stimulated by .
A) a famous scholar in the study of the human brain
B) a leading specialist in the study of liberal arts
C) an English teacher in a university for the deaf
D) some senior experts in American Sign Language
23. According to Stokoe, sign language is .
A) a substandard language
B) a genuine language
C) an artificial language
D) an international language
24. Most educators objected to Stokoe’s idea because they thought .
A) sign language was not extensively used even by deaf people
B) sign language was too artificial to be widely accepted
<br>C) a language should be easy to use and understand
D) a language could only exist in the form of speech sounds
25. Stokoe’s argument is based on his belief that .
A) sign language is as efficient as any other language
B) sign language is derived from natural language
C) language is a system of meaningful codes
D) language is a product of the brain
Passage Four
Questions 26 to 30 are based on the following passage.
It came as something of a surprise when Diana, Princess of Wales, made a trip co Angola in 1997, to support the Red Cross’s campaign for a total ban on all anti-personnel landmines. Within hours of arriving in Angola, television screens around the world were filled with images of her comforting victims injured in explosions caused by landmines. I knew the statistics, she said. But putting a face to those figures brought the reality home to me; like when I met Sandra, a 13- year-old girl who had lost her leg, and people like her. |
