职称英语考试

【单选题】

When one looks back upon the fifteen hundred years that are the life span of theEnglish language, he should be able to notice a number of significant truths. The history of our language has always been a history of constant change—at times a slow, almost imperceptible change, at other times a violent collision between two languages. Our language has always been a living growing organism; it has never been statiC、Another significant truth that emerges from such a study is that language at all times has been the possession not of one class or group but of many.At one extreme it has been the property of the common, ignorant folk, who have used it in the daily business of their living, much as they have used their animals or the kitchen pots and pans.At the other extreme it has been the treasure of those who have respected it as an instrument and a sign of civilization, and who have struggled by writing it down to give it some permanence, order, dignity, and if possible, a little beauty.
As we consider our changing language, we should note here two developments that are of special and immediate importance to us. One is that since the time of theAnglo Saxons there has been an almost complete reversal of the different devices for showing the relationship of words in a sentence.Anglo-Saxon (oldEnglish) was a language of many inflections. ModernEnglish has few inflections. We must now depend largely on word order and function words to convey the meanings that the older language did by means of changes in the forms of words. Function words, you should understand, are words such as prepositions, conjunctions, and a few others that are used primarily to show relationships among other words.A、few inflections, however, have surviveD、And when some word inflections come into conflict with word order, there may be trouble for the users of the language, as we shall see later when we turn our attention to such maters as WHO or WHOM and M
E、or I. The second fact we must consider is that as language itself changes, our attitudes toward language forms change also. The eighteenth century, for example, produced from various sources a tendency to fix the language into patterns not always set in and grew, until at the present time there is a strong tendency to restudy and re-evaluate language practices in terms of the ways in which people speak and write.

Which of the following statements is not mentioned in the passageA．It is generally believed that the year 1500 can be set as the beginning of the modernEnglish language.
B．Some other languages had great influence on theEnglish language at some stages of its development.
C．TheEnglish language has been and still in a state of relatively constant change.
D．Many classes or groups have contributed to the development of theEnglish language.

网考网参考答案：A
网考网解析：
根据文章的内容，选项A“普遍认为1500年是现代英语的起点”在文章中没有提及，故为正确答案。文章第二句说“The history of our language has always been a history of constant change—at times a slow, almost imperceptible change, at other times a violent collision between two languages．(我们语言的历史是一个不断变化的历史——在一些时间里缓慢得几乎难以察觉，在另一些时间里则是两种语言的激烈碰撞。)，由此可以推断一些其他的语言对英语的发展有重大影响。选项B符合文章的意思。 document.getElementById("warp").style.display="none"; document.getElementById("content").style.display="block"; 查看试题解析出处>>