公共课英语一模拟题2020年(76).pdfVIP

公共课英语一模拟题2020 年(76) (总分：100.00，做题时间：180 分钟) 阅读理解(总题数：5，分数：100.00) Partly due to a historical development marked by worldwide colonialism, urbanization, and globalization, in the course of this century humankind is likely to experience its most extreme cultural loss. As K. David Harrison notes in When Languages Die, The last speakers of probably half of the worlds languages are alive today. Their children or grandchildren are pressured to speak only the dominant language of their community or country. Under one estimate, more than 50% of the 6,900 or so languages identified nowadays are expected to become extinct in a matter of a few decades. The precise criteria for what counts as a distinct language are controversial—especially those regarding closely related linguistic systems, which are often inaccurately referred to as dialects of the same language. The problem is complicated by the insufficiency of studies about the grammar of many of the worlds endangered languages. In addition, from a cognitive standpoint any two groups of individuals whose languages are mutually intelligible may in fact have distinct mental grammars. As a cognitive system, a language shows dynamic properties that cannot exist independently of its speakers. This is the sense in which the Anatolian languages and Dalmatian are extinct. Therefore, language preservation depends on the maintenance of the native-speaking human groups. Unfortunately, the most accelerated loss of distinct languages takes place where economic development is rapid, worsening the breakdown of minority communities that speak different languages. In this perspective, a language often begins to die long before the passing of the last speaker: New generations may start using it only for limited purposes, increasingly shifting to the communitys dominant language. In this process, knowledge of the dying language erodes both at the individual level an