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 (混雜英語). 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, wheneven deaf people dismissed their signing as“substandard”. Stokoe’s idea was academic heresy (異端邪說).

　　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 (調節) 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.”

　　練習題：

　　Choose correct answers to the question:

　　1. 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

　　2. 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

　　3. According to Stokoe, sign language is ________.

　　A. a Substandard language

　　B. a genuine language

　　C. an artificial language

　　D. an international language

　　4. 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

　　C. a language should be easy to use and understand

　　D. a language could only exist in the form of speech sounds

　　5. 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

　　1.[B] 從文章第3句“手語提供了一種新方法，用以探索大腦如何產生和理解語言，并為一個長期以來的科學爭端——語言(連同語法)究竟是我們與生俱來的，還是一種我們后天學會的行為——提出了新的解釋”可以看出，這是對語言的性質的傳統觀點的挑戰，即B 。A錯在learning,文章并不是在討論語言的學習，而是語言的產生和理解;C為簡單原詞干擾D;中的an attempt to clarify misunderstanding是對throw new light on an old scientific controversy的曲解，因為controversy不等于misunderstanding。另外，第1段最后一句中的rebel“反叛”一詞也與B中的“挑戰”一致。

　　2.[C] 根據第1段最后一句可知，選C。題干中的was stimulated相當于原文中的has roots in。

　　3.[B] 根據第3段第2—4句以及最后一段第3句，可知B為答案。前者提出猜想(Might deaf people actually have a genuine language?)，后者含有一個同位語 his idea that signed languages are natural languages。

　　4.[D] 根據最后一段第4句，可知D正確。D中的only exist in the form of speech sounds是對原文中be based on speech的同義表達。

　　5.[D] 根據文章最后一句，可知D正確。D中的a product of the brain是對原文中brain stuff的同義表達。B中的derived from錯誤，因為Stokoe認為sign language就是一種natural language。

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