When one looks back upon the fifteen
hundred years that are the life span of
the English 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.』① 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 the
Anglo-Saxons there has been an almost
complete reversal of the different
devices for showing the relationship of
words in a sentence. Anglo-Saxon (old
English) was a language of many
inflections. Modern English 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 ME 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.
』②
1. In contrast to the earlier linguists,
modern linguists tend to ______.
A. attempt to continue the
standardization of the language
B. evaluate language practices in terms
of current speech rather than standards
or proper patterns
C. be more concerned about the
improvement of the language than its
analysis or history
D. be more aware of the rules of the
language usage
2. Choose the appropriate meaning for the
word “inflection” used in line 4 of
paragraph 2.
A. Changes in the forms of words.
B. Changes in sentence structures.
C. Changes in spelling rules.
D. Words that have similar meanings.
3. Which of the following statements is
not mentioned in the passage?
A. It is generally believed that the year
1500 can be set as the beginning of the
modern English language.
B. Some other languages had great
influence on the English language at some
stages of its development.
C. The English language has been and
still in a state of relatively constant
change.
D. Many classes or groups have
contributed to the development of the
English language.
4. The author of these paragraphs is
probably a(an) ______.
A. historian B. philosopher C.
anthropologist D. linguist
5.Which of the following can be best used
as the title of the passage?
A. The history of the English language.
B. Our changing attitude towards the
English language.
C. Our changing language.
D. Some characteristics of modern
English.