专家解析大学英语四级考试历年阅读真题(十三)

　　可以看到A、B、C的说法在最后一段找不到任何类似内容。D所说的“价格使公民站在了不平等的基础上”中，价格应该就是指的氢弹的昂贵，使不平等应该是说富人买得起而穷人买不起，这符合上面的分析。应该选D。

　　20. From the tone of the passage we know that the author is ________.

　　A) doubtful about the necessity of keeping H-bombs at home for safety

　　B) unhappy with those who vote against the ownership of H-bombs

　　C) not serious about the private ownership of H-bombs

　　D) concerned about the spread of nuclear weapons(A)

　　本题问从这篇文章的叙述基调可知作者如何如何。

　　A，对出于安全因素而在家中存放氢弹的必要性表示怀疑。

　　B， 对那些投票反对个人拥有氢弹的人存有反感。

　　C，对私人拥有氢弹问题并不在乎。

　　D，忧心核武器的扩散。

　　从文章内容来看，作者实际上自始至终没有提出自己的观点，只是引用氢弹协会与反对者两方面的意见进行论述，要想从中看出作者的倾向比较困难。但内容本身还是能够传达出一些信号供我们分析。首先，在写作一篇关于氢弹协会的文章之始，在写作方向上可以有很多选择，如将其做为新生事物做正面介绍——这就暗示作者有支持氢弹协会的倾向(如此就可以选B);或者把此事作为新闻事件仅客观地加以叙述，写法类似于新闻报道(如此就可以选C)。但读完文章后可以发现，作者没有按照上述的写法写作，而是引入很多反对意见，以问答的形式介绍在该事件上的争论情况，这样就至少可以判断出作者的倾向不是支持氢弹协会的，否则就不会罗列如此之多的反对意见，来让读者了解到私人拥有氢弹的弊端。其次，可以发现作者罗列的反对意见是非常深入非常尖锐的，尤其是最后两段，对前面发言人的观点做了针锋相对的反驳，如果作者的态度是事不关己，相信不会如此和氢弹协会的人过不去。因此可以判断作者的态度大致是对私人拥有氢弹表示担心的。答案应该是A。

　　D的说法似乎也对，但应该注意D的用词，nuclear weapons用的是复数形式，那么这个词组就指的是破坏力极强的军事上使用的核武器，而不是家庭用的氢弹。如果指家庭用氢弹应该这么表述：the nuclear weapon，用the特指文章已经提到的氢弹，weapon用单数。

　　Passage Three

　　Questions 21 to 25 are based on the following passage.

　　Sign has become a scientific hot button. Only in the past 20 years have specialists in language study realized that signed languages are unique—a speech of the hand. They offer a new way to probe how the brain generates and understands language, and throw new light on an old scientific controversy: whether language, complete with grammar, is something that we are born With, or whether it is a learned behavior. The current interest in sign language has roots in the pioneering work of one rebel teacher at Gallaudet University in Washington, D. C., the world’s only liberal arts university for deaf people.

　　When Bill Stokoe went to Gallaudet to teach English, the school enrolled him in a course in signing. But Stokoe noticed something odd: among themselves, students signed differently from his classroom teacher.

　　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 cafe 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(C)