Directions: This test paper is designed for a work period of 3 hours. This booklet only contains questions. You are supposed to write all your answers in a separate booklet named "Answer Booklet". Write in dark ink.

I. Multiple Choice: (30 points)

Each of the following sentences demands one word for its completion. Your task is to pick from the four choices a word that you think may fit in the blank in the sentence. Write the letter that corresponds to your choice in the answer booklet. 环球时代 英语专业考研 北京外国语大学 英研 专四专八 09考研 真题

1. When the fire broke out, the people lost their          and ran in all directions. Many people lost their life when they ran away from the fire.

A. hearts              B. heads            C. minds              D. souls

2. I got a job as a salesman at the corporation. There are a few things that I don't like about the job, but       it's very enjoyable.

A. above all              B. as usual              C. by and large             D. by no means

3. In the preface          my book, I express my sincere gratitude to all the teachers and friends who have been of help to me during my three years' life in the university.

A. on                   B. for                  C. to                          D. in

4. When the young man realized that the police had spotted him, he made           the exit as quickly as possible, only to find that two policemen were waiting outside.

A. off                   B. from               C. towards                D. for

5. Bob was told that the most important consideration with the strategies of product promotion is carefully    the risks and benefits, and their feasibility as well.

A. weighing             B. stimulating       C. evaluating              D. formulating

6. Some women would like to go shopping at weekends since they expect to pick up wonderful          in the market, and they usually spend a couple of hours in shopping.

A. securities             B. bargains              C. disposals                D. bonds

7. The Supreme Court's decisions on physician-assisted suicide carry important          for how medicine seeks to relieve dying patients of pain and suffering.

A. implications            B. complications       C. innovations          D. complexities

8. But if robots are to reach the next stage of labor-saving utility, they will have to operate with less human   and be able to make at least a few decisions for themselves—goals that pose a real challenge.

A. interaction           B. supervision      C. availability           D. disposition

9. Unemployment is a category that comprises a large variety of workers, including some farmers, construction workers, house painters, and others whose work may be seasonal or            because of weather.

A. sporadic              B. spontaneous            C. exponential              D. ephemeral

10. Catherine's mother was         ill last summer, but fortunately, she was making a slow but steady recovery after an operation was done on her lung.

A. definitely             B. definitively       C. critically                  D. fatally

环球时代 英语专业考研 北京外国语大学 英研 专四专八 09考研 真题

II. Cloze: (20 points)

In each of the following sentences, one word is missing. Your task is to guess at the missing word with the help of the context. Then write the word in the answer booklet.

31. It shows, rather, that the ability to judge rightly and separate the true from the false, which is essentially what is called good sense or reason, is        nature equal in all men.

32. One factor which distinguishes Bill Gates from the morning deliverer is the level of business success each desires to          . Determining what success means to you is a crucial element in the early stages of new venture planning.

33. If the product is in short supply         to the demand, the price will be a bit up and some consumers will be eliminated from the market.

34. As a medium of exchange, money permits the        of exchange into the two distinct acts f buying and selling, without requiring the seller to purchase goods from the person who buys his products, or vice versa.

35. Furthermore, social change is easier if it is         . For example, it comes more readily in human relations on a continuous scale rather than one with sharp dichotomies.

36. We have only to look          us to get some sense of what may lie ahead. No one looking ahead 20 years possibly could have foreseen the ways in which a single invention, the chip, would have transformed our world thanks to its application in personal computers.

37. Handsome male executives were perceived as having more integrity than plainer men; effort and ability were thought to          for their success.

38. The newcomers also tend to see office matters with a fresh eye, in the process sometime coming up   critical analyses of the- forces that shape everyone's experience in the organization.

39. Payroll checks should be distributed directly to employees,           proper identification, by treasurer's department personnel. Alternatively, payroll check may be deposited directly in the employee's checking account.

40. Before a certain age, young children cannot recognize, much                   respect, the necessary boundaries between work and family.

III. Error Correction: (20 points)

Each of the following sentences contains an error. Your task is to identify that error and correct it. Write both the label letter and the correction in the answer booklet.

51. The railroad was not the first institution to impose regularity on society, or to draw attention on the importance

    A                                  B                                     C

of precise timekeeping.

               D

52. Were it not for public acceptance of a single yardstick of time, social life would be unbearable chaotic: the

     A                                                                   B

massive daily transfers of goods, services, and information would proceed in fits and starts.

              C                                             D

53. Social critics and the general public in the United States have blamed television on every social ill from

                                                     A             B           C

declining academic performance to juvenile delinquency.

   D

54. The suspension bridge, with its roadway held up by chains or cables fastened to large towers, was first

                                      A                      B

patented in the U.S. in 1796. By 1810 about 50 such bridges were built.

                                       C          D

55. Though Roebling was the most prominent bridge builder in the U.S., thousands of other bridges were built in

                                A                                     B                 C

many different forms and styles through the country during the nineteenth century.

D

环球时代 英语专业考研 北京外国语大学 英研 专四专八 09考研 真题

IV. Reading Comprehension: (30 points)

In this part you will find three passages, each followed by five questions. For each question, four tentative answers are given. Your task is to read the passages carefully, and then choose the one true answer to the related question. Write the letter that corresponds to your answer in the answer booklet.

Passage One

The Roman language served as the first model for answering the question. Even to someone with no knowledge of Latin, the similarities among Roman languages would have made it natural to suggest that they were derived from a common ancestor. On the assumption that the shared characteristic of these languages came from the common ancestor, it would have been possible to reconstruct many of the characteristics of the original common language. In much the same way it became clear that the branches of the Indo-European family could be studied and a hypothetical family tree constructed, reading back to a common ancestor. This is the tree approach. The basic process represented by the tree model is one of divergence: when languages become isolated from one another, they differ increasingly, and dialects gradually, become different until they become separate languages.

Divergence is by no means the only possible tendency in language evolution. Johannes Schmidt introduced a "wave" model, in which linguistic changer, were like waves, eventually leading to convergence; that is, growing similarity among languages that were initially quite different.

Today, however, most linguists think primarily in terms of family trees. It is necessary to construct some models of how language change might occur according to a process-based view. There are four main classes of models.

The first is the process of initial colonization, by which an uninhabited territory becomes populated; its language naturally becomes that of the colonizers. Second are processes of divergence, such as the linguistic divergence arising from separation or isolation mentioned above in relation to early models of the Indo-European languages. The third group of models is based on processes of linguistic convergence. The wave model, formulated by Schmidt in the 1370's, is an example, but convergence methods have not generally found favor among linguists.

Now, the slow and rather static operation of these processes is complicated by another factor: linguistic replacement. That factor provides the basis for a fourth class of models. In many areas of the world the languages initially spoken by the indigenous people have come to be replaced, fully or partially, by languages spoken by people coming from outside. Were it not for this large complicating factor, the world's linguistic history could be faithfully described by the initial distribution of Homo Sapiens, followed by the gradual workings of divergence and convergence. So linguistic replacement also has a key role to play in explaining the origins of the Indo-European languages.

71. The characteristics of the original common language can be described on the basis of       _          .

A. the similarities among Romance languages

B. the hypothetical family tree

C. the process known as divergence

D. the common features of Roman languages

72. According to Johannes Schmidt,         

A. languages change on a large scale like waves

B. divergence is not the only possible tendency in language change

C. language evolution can be explained in terms of divergence and convergence

D. different languages will become increasingly similar until they develop into one language

73. It can be inferred from Paragraph 4 that      .

A. there doesn't exist any satisfactory model of language change

B. most linguists explain language change only in terms of divergence

C. most linguists generally don't accept the idea of language convergence

D. the first process in language evolution is colonization, followed by divergence

74. Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage?

A. Linguistic replacement can be ignored for the linguistic history to be fully described.

B. Linguistic replacement cannot be ignored in explaining where the Indo-European languages come from

C. Because of linguistic replacement, the other three models prove to be incorrect

D. Compared with the other models, linguistic replacement is the most important model

75. This passage is primarily written to            .

A. discuss the importance of linguistic replacement

B. introduce the origin of the Indo-European language

C. explain the divergence of the Indo-European languages

D. introduce models concerning the origin of the Indo-European languages

环球时代 英语专业考研 北京外国语大学 英研 专四专八 09考研 真题

VI. C-E Translation: (25 points)

Translate the following passage from Chinese into English. Write your English version in the answer booklet.      

我冒了严寒，回到相隔两千余里，别了二十余年的故乡去，时候既然是深冬；渐进故乡时，天气又阴晦了，冷风吹进船舱中，从蓬隙向外一望，在苍黄的天底下，远近横着几个萧素的荒村，没有一点活气，我的心禁不住悲凉起来了。

啊！这不是我二十年来时时记得的故乡？

我所记得的故乡全部如此。我的故乡好多了，但要我记得起他的美丽，说出他的佳处来，却没有影象，没有立辞了，仿佛也就是如此。于是我自己解释说：故乡本也如此，——虽然没有进步，也未必有如我所感的悲凉，这只是我自己心情的改变罢了，因为我这次回乡，本没有什么好心情。

我这次是专门为了别他而来的。我们多年聚族而居的老屋，已经共同卖给别姓了，交屋的期限，只在本年，所以必须赶在正月初一以前，永别了熟识的老屋，而且远离了熟识的故乡，搬到我在谋食的异地去。

（略）