英语四级阅读200篇:Unit 49 passage 1

　　Passage 1

　　Native Speakers and World English

　　Any science needs to ensure that the concepts with which it operates and the terms that are used to express those concepts are clear and precise. From time to time, as a science progresses, a spring-cleaning of its conceptual equipment and terminology may become necessary. So also in linguistics, and one term that is overdue for compulsory retirement is native as used in phrases like native language and native speaker .

　　Used in this way native must surely be one of the most misleading and confusing terms ever employed in technical or semi-technical argumentation. Two other terms, partly synonymous with it, run it a close second or third: mother tongue and first language. A persons mother tongue is not necessarily his mothers tongue; nor is not necessarily his first language always that which he learnt first, because first can mean first in importance as well as first in time and, alas, the two meanings are sometimes run together as if they were one and the same. All three terms, moreover, are surrounded by an aura of mystique and are heavily loaded with emotional connotations inimical to sober scientific investigation. However, in writings by linguists the most commonly used phrase is native language . The nativeness of native

　　The phrase has a long history. It arose in medieval times, when scholars writing in Latin would sometimes use expressions like natal idiom and lingua native. In fairness it should be pointed out that those terms made better sense in earlier times, because for centuries it was commonly believed or suspected that language was in some way biologically inherited. We know now that no human baby is born with an innate knowledge of any particular language; all normal babies learn the language of the environment. Yet the traditional use of native language continues and appears at times to convey a latent element of the earlier meaning, implying that we come into this world not in utter nakedness but trailing, each of us, the rudiments of some specific language. Many laymen and indeed some linguists distinguish between a native language and an acquired one as if they were not, both of them, post-natal acquisitions learnt

　　from the environment.

　　But lets be fair: most reputable linguists would define native language , as Leonard Bloomfield did in his book Language, as the first language a person learns, the language of his childhood home, or words to that effect, Nevertheless, Bloomfield went on to say that a persons adult language is not necessarily the same as his native language, of which he may have forgotten all but a smattering . Bloomfield was thinking in particular of children of immigrants to America, but similar cases occur in Britain and elsewhere. Yet almost in the same breath Bloomfield defined a bilingual as one who has native-like control of two languages , and I am quite sure he did not mean to suggest that a bilingual person may only remember a smattering of his two languages which would indeed disqualify him as a bilingual.

　　This curious contradiction or confusion is a fallacy to which most linguists seem prone. They choose to indicate a high degree of proficiency in the use of a language by referring to what a so-called native speaker of that language is thought to know, well aware though they are that some adults remember little or nothing of their native language , having for one reason or another abandoned it at an early age in favour of another language. Moreover, those same ex- native speakers of one language will most often have attained a degree of proficiency in their second-learnt language which equals that of native speakers .

　　In practice we all have a fairly clear idea of what is meant by native-like control . We mean the proficiency of somebody who is fully at home in the language, is confident in his use of it and is able to make judgments about usage with which other members of the language community will normally agree. We generally expect him to be a cultured person familiar with both spoken and written usage. Such at least is the usual picture, but of course there are native speakers of substandard varieties and regional dialects as well, and this last point introduces an element of fuzziness: can an original dialect speaker be accepted as a native speaker of the standard? Another cause of fuzziness is that linguists are becoming increasingly aware nowadays that native speakers sometimes differ considerably in their judgment of what is acceptable usage. Standard languages have been found to be less monolithic than they were traditionally assumed to be.

　　A useful concept wrongly named

　　Despite all fuzziness the concept of the native speaker may still be a useful one, but it needs to be modified and redefined. In the first place the name is wrong: it creates a false impression of causal links. But although linguists are fully aware that birth and early learning in the country concerned are neither an essential condition nor a sure guarantee of native-like control , they tend to cling to the notion of native speakership with great determination.

　　There is possibly an element of irrational prejudice in this determination, but another reason has to do with scientific method. A researcher often feels the need of a precisely defined body of material with which to work, a corpus, and in compiling it he may find that birth and education in the relevant country are useful criteria, because they are easy to define and to verify. A widening of the criteria to comprise competent non-native speakers as well would create difficulty because of the possible and indeed likely heterogeneity of their backgrounds. In practice, therefore, a language is often equated with the combined usages of the body of native speakers , and so a doctrine has arisen that the native speaker is always right , because anything that he utters is considered part of the language and worthy of record. From this position it is but a short step to the view that the language belongs to the native speakers , who are the sole owners.

　　In Noam Chomskys grammatical theory the native speaker-hearer originally played the role of arbiter of grammaticality, but Chomsky has since changed his position. A few years ago, in a symposium edited by Thomas M. Paikeday, The Native Speaker is Dead his contribution amounted to saying that there are no languages or dialects but only idiolects, and more than one such for each individual. Nevertheless, he said, some idiolect are close enough to be regarded as identical for practical purposes and thus to constitute a language in ordinary usage . Grammaticality, on this view, becomes a matter of compromise. We find that some issues are relegated by Chomsky to what he calls questions of convenience for certain purposes and questions of grammaticality appear to belong to that category. There is thus no Chomskyan support for the traditional notion of native speakership , and as for second language users, their speech is apparently to be accommodated under idiolects. This interpretation seems to be implied in a brief remark about the radical effect that late second language learning may have on an individuals steady state , on his bunch of idiolects.

　　1. The passage gives a general description of the misconceptions of native language .

　　2. Ones native language may not be the same as that of his or her mother.

　　3. It has been proved that the capability of acquiring language is biologically inherited.

　　4. Bloomfield assumed adult language to be identical to first language.

　　5. Chomsky always thought that a native speakers utterances should be used as standard language.

　　6. People can speak a second language as proficiently as native speakers.

　　7. Chomsky was concerned with studying how to produce grammatical sentences.

　　8. First language, native language and ______ are often surrounded by an aura of

　　mystique.

　　9. Whoever is fully at home in a language is generally expected to be familiar with both ______of the language.

　　10. The phrase native speaker needs to be______or redefined.

　　答案：

　　I. Y 2. Y 3. N 4. N 5. N 6. Y 7. NG

　　8. mother tongue 9. spoken and written usage 10. modified

　　希望考生能够认认真真准备，争取能够顺利通过考试。