Question

【題目】A study of more than five million books, both fiction and non-fiction, has found a marked decline in the use of emotional words over time. The researchers form the University of Bristol used Google Ngram Viewer, a facility for finding the frequency of terms in scanned books, to search for more than 600 particular words identified as representing anger, dislike, fear, joy, sadness and surprise.

They found that almost all of the categories showed a drop in these “mood words” over time. Only in the category of fear was there an increase in usage.

“It is a steady and continuous decrease,” said Dr Alberto Acerbi. He assumed that the result might be explained by a change in the position occupied by literature, in a crowded media landscape. “One thing could be that in parallel to books the 20th century saw the start of other media. Maybe these media — movies, radio, drama, had more emotional content than books.”

Although both joy and sadness followed the general downwards trend, the research, published in the journal PLOS One, found that they also exhibited another interesting behaviour：the ratio (比率) between the two varied greatly, apparently mirroring historical events.

During the Roaring Twenties the joy-to-sadness ratio reached a peak that would not occur again until before the recent financial crash. But the ratio plunged at the height of the Second World War. Nevertheless, the researchers held a reserved opinion about their claim that their result reflected wider social trends. In the paper, they even argue that the reverse could be true.

“It has been suggested, for example, that it was the suppression (壓抑) of desire in ordinary Elizabethan English life that increased demand for writing ‘filled with romance and sex’… perhaps,” they conclude, “songs and books may not reflect the real population any more than catwalk models reflect the average body.”

【1】The word "decline" (paragraph 1) is closest in meaning to_________.

A. increase B. rise C. decrease D. change

【2】A study of more than five million books indicated a decrease in “mood words” over time except_______.

A. in the use of the words of historical events

B. in the category of fear

C. in the category of literature

D. in the category of joy

【3】What’s the main idea of this passage?

A. A study of emotional words.

B. A study about vocabulary in literature.

C. Reasons for the use of emotional words decreases in literature.

D. A study on increase in the category of fear.

Answer 1

【答案】

【1】C

【2】B

【3】C

【解析】

試題分析:本篇是一篇關(guān)于文學(xué)作品中詞匯用量研究的科普文章。開篇首段即提出一個研究結(jié)論：在各種類型的書籍中，表達(dá)情感的詞匯用量在下降。第二段對上文進(jìn)行補(bǔ)充，強(qiáng)調(diào)單單表達(dá)恐懼的詞匯用量呈上升趨勢。緊接著第三段中給出了造成這種情緒詞匯下降的原因——新媒體（電影、廣播、戲�。┑尼绕稹５谒�、五、六段進(jìn)一步探討了新話題：表示快樂的詞匯用量與表示悲傷的詞匯用量這兩者的比率，能間接反映出歷史事件和歷史趨勢。

【1】詞義辨析題。decline 下降；increase 增加；rise上升；decrease下降；change改變 根據(jù)句意故選C。

【2】細(xì)節(jié)理解題。根據(jù)原文“Only in the category of fear was there an increase in usage.”在使用上，只有恐懼類別的詞是增加的。故選B。

【3】主旨大意題。通覽全文，本文在陳述了表達(dá)情感的詞匯量在下降這一事實以后，著重說明這一現(xiàn)象的原因。故選C。