2007年中共中央黨校考博英語真題(閱讀)

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According to Saussure, meaning is the result of a process of combination and selection. The sentence, ‘I saw a dog today’, is meaningful through the accumulation of its different parts: today I/saw/a dog/. Its meaning is only complete once the final word is spoken or inscribed. Saussure calls this process the syntagmatic axis of language. One can add other parts to extend its meaningfulness: ‘Today I saw a dog in the rain” Meaning is thus accumulated along the synagmatic axis of language.
Meaning can also be changed by substituting certain parts of the sentence for new parts. For example: ‘Terrorists carried out an attack on an army base today’. Substitutions from the paradigmatic axis could alter the meaning of this sentence considerably. If we substitute ‘freedom fighters’ or ‘a(chǎn)nti-imperialist volunteers’ for the word ‘terrorists’ we would have a sentence meaningful in quite a different way. This would be achieved without any reference to a corresponding reality outside of the sentence itself. The meaning of the sentence is produced through a process of selection and combination. This is because the relationship between ‘sign’ and ’referent’ is also arbitrary. It follows, therefore, that the language we speak does not simply reflect the material reality of the world; rather, by providing us with a conceptual map with which to impose a certain order on what we see and experience, the language we speak plays a significant role in shaping what constitutes for us the reality of the material world.
Structuralists argue that language organizes and constructs our sense of reality different languages in effect produce different mappings of the real. When, for example, a European gazes at a snowscape, he or she sees snow. An Inuit, with over fifty words to describe snow, looking at the same snowscape would presumably see so much more, Therefore an Inuit and a European standing together surveying the snowscape would in fact be seeing two quite different conceptual scenes. What these examples demonstrate to a structuralist is that the way we conceptualize the world is ultimately dependent on the language we speak. And by analogy, it will depend on the culture we inhabit. The meanings made possible by language are thus the result of the interplay of a network of relationships between combination and selection, similarity and difference. Meaning cannot be accounted for by reference to and extra-linguistic reality. As Saussure insists, ‘in language there are only differences without positive terms—language has neither ideas nor sounds that existed before the linguistic system, but only conceptual and phonic differences that have issued from the system’ . We might want to query this assumption by noting that the snowscape is named differently by Inuits because of the material bearing it has on their day-to-day existence. It could also be objected that substituting ‘terrorists’ for ‘freedom fighters’ produces meanings not accounted for purely by linguistics.
1.What would be the most appropriate title for this passage?
A、Saussure’s View on Language
B、Syntagmatic and Paradigmatic Axis of Language
C、Structural Language Theory
D、Meanings of Sentences
2.What does “axis” means in line 4 of the first paragraph?
A、political connection between two or more states
B、line that divides a regular figure into two symmetrical parts
C、line round which a turning object spins
D、line round which the meaningfulness of a sentence can be extended
3.How do you understand Saussure’s assumption in the last paragraph?
A、The meanings made possible by language result from the relationships within different terms of the linguistic system, not being accounted for by reference to an extra-linguistic reality.
B、There is essential core of meaning that a referent must have in order to count as the proper referent for that sign.
C、There is defining property which the concept must retain in order to count as the of that sign.
D、In all cases, we discover not values emanating from the linguistic system but ideas given in advance

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