Ⅱ.语法(Grammar)

与词汇相比较,语法更为重要。词汇无限,语法规则有限,若能从语法入手,不仅能顺利越过生词障碍,而且能更准确地把握文章的重点,更快获取所要的信息。本章将分别论述长句分割、句间关系、句子重心、主谓宾划分和难句分析等问题。

1.长句分割

·长句如何化繁为简

1.标点:逗号、分号、冒号等

2.连词:and, but, or, rather than……

3.从句标志:that, which, where, when……

4.并列介词结构:from……from……,to……to……,either……or……,……

5.固定短语:so……that, from……to, assign……to,……


Exercise A:Answer the questions in Italic type within 10 seconds.

1. How many skills are required in the society?

What is important is that the child develops the range of social skills—being able to express a preference, knowing how to take turns, being able to stand up for themselves, being able to get into a group, being able to make decisions, being able to share, having confidence to go off on their own. These all require careful nurturing.No one is telling parents not to think about their children's development.It is just that it is more important to think about a child's desire to chat and the importance of social behavior and play activity, than the actually more trivial markers of intellectual achievement such as being the first kid in the group to cut out a circle that looks like a circle.

2. How many possible reasons are there accounting for intellectual disabilities?

For the majority of intellectual disabilities, there is no identifiable cause but there are some causes that are well documented. They include:brain damage at birth due to lack of oxygen—prolonged labour during childbirth;brain damage before birth due to factors such as rubella, drug or diet-related problems;damage after birth due to illnesses such as encephalitis or accidents;hereditary defects in the genes;abnormal chromosome count resulting in, for example, Down Syndrome.


Exercise B:Divide the following sentences into TWO parts.

We cannot say definitely that the temperature rises are due to the greenhouse effect;the heating may be part of a‘natural'variability over a long time-scale that we have not yet recognized in our short 100 years of recording.

Of the two orders of dinosaurs, the Saurischia was the larger and the first to evolve.It is divided into two suborders:Therapoda, or therapods, and Sauropodo-morpha, or sauropodomorphs.

Stone tools found in Kakadu have now been dated to at least 50,000 years, and camp sites as diverse as Lake Mungo in the Willandra lakes region of NSW and WA's upper Swan River have yield tools charcoal radiocarbon—dated to between 38,000 and 45,000 years.

While much work has been done on the development of power sources for water pumping, for many people in rural Africa the use of human energy remains the only practical option.

Expeditioners heading south were issued with pamphlets listing five-letter codes covering almost every conceivable situation so they could communicate with their families and still keep within strict‘word limits'during their year on base.

Combine the act of giving with some knowledge of and sensitivity to the culture of the recipient and you have an invaluable chance to earn respect and lay the foundations of a durable and mutually beneficial business relationship.

Most significantly, in dinosaurs, the pelvis and femur had evolved so that the hind limbs were held vertically beneath the body, rather than sprawling out to the sides like the limbs of a lizard.

The pulp and paper industry has not been badly affected by the electronic technologies that promised a paperless society but has been radically altered by the pressure from another front—a more environmentally conscious society driving an irreversible move towards cleaner industrial production.

The environmental effects were at the time either not understood, or regarded as an acceptable cost of economic prosperity in an increasingly import-oriented world economy.

That comes from years of exposure and familiarity with letters, from being read to, from playing with magnetic letters, drawing and fiddling with computers.

While staple foods such as maize and rice produced during the rainy season can be stored for consumption in the dry season, the same is not true of vegetables and fruit which are essential for good nutrition.

The beliefs of Vietnamese folk medicine associate illness with the absence of any of the three souls which maintain life, intelligence, and the senses, or of the nine spirits which collectively sustain the living body.

Traditional, egalitarian and collaborative styles are viewed by some as being dependent on female and male gender-role attitudes, both of self and partner.

An opposing view sees the three family divisions of labor styles as a reflection of the progressive changes couples make in response to changing life situations, rather than being an aspect of personality.

The conclusion last summer of a 10-year building program has seen the historic zinc-alum shacks and even older wooden sheds built at an early Antarctic base, on Heard Island in 1947,supplanted by vast, bright-colored buildings with bay-window views and ski-lodge decor.


2.句间关系

·句与句、词与词的关系

句与句之间不是机械的排列,而是有序的排列,它们之间的关系可能是并列、递进、转折、因果、让步、条件、顺接等;同样的,词与词之间也存在这些关系。

因果关系:因A果B

Example 1:

A report on young driver research prepared last year by Monash University's accident research center found that in 1990 and 1991,almost a third of the people killed in road crashes were drivers under 25,yet this age group represents only 14 per cent of the population.

若改为图示,则句中关系一目了然:

A report

□—on……

□—prepared……

□—by……

found that

□—in……

□—almost a third of the people

·killed……

□—were drivers……

□—yet this age group represents……


Example 2:

Geological movements are not the only occurrences to trigger an earthquake. Human activity, most often the filling of reservoirs with extraordinarily large amounts of water, can also cause earthquakes.Lake Mead, on the Colorado River in the United States, was filled in 1935 and was the first example of an artificial lake being responsible for earthquake activity.Similarly, massive explosions, such as quarry blasting and nuclear tests can also wreak havoc.

Causes of earthquakes:

I.   1  

II.   2  

A   3   for example   5  

B   4   for example   6   and   7  


Example 3:

Like lizards, dinosaurs are included in the class Reptilia, or reptiles, one of the five main classes of Vertebrata, animals with backbones.

Both dinosaurs and lizards are animals with backbones.(TRUE/FALSE/NOT GIVEN)

解题:

将生词用字母代替,得出Like a, b are included in the class c, or d, one of the five main classes of e, f.进一步推出彼此关系:a/b<c=d<e=f,考题问的是a&b<f,关系一致,故答案为TRUE。


Exercise C:Use a word or phrase to create a link between the pairs of sentences. You should not try to make them into one sentence, but you need to make a bridge between them.

Example:

I need to be in the right mood to study.

I find it difficult to study in a room which is not insulated from noise.

I need to be in the right mood to study. Moreover, I find it difficult to study in a room which is not insulated from noise.

1.The publishing industry has recently taken a number of technological leaps forward.

The question remains as to whether technology will improve literary content.

2.Computers are widely seen in classrooms today.

Children as young as five are learning to use them.

3.The fast food industry is facing considerable criticism from health professionals.Companies now often claim that their food is nutritious and full of healthy ingredients.

4.We are now in a position to order our groceries over the Internet.

We can benefit from the extra leisure time this gives us.

5.It was disappointing that our football club lost in the final on Saturday.

It didn't help that the captain tripped over and had to be taken off on a stretcher.Then, the referee gave a penalty kick to the other side as a result of the accident.


Exercise D:Analyze the logic in the following sentences.

Example 1:As our roads become more dangerous, more parents drive their children to more places, thus contributing to increased levels of danger for the remaining pedestrians.

Example 2:As people work more, the appetite for leisure activities has grown to compensate for the greater stress in life.

More work→greater stress→growing appetite for leisure activities

1. Working hours are not expected to decrease, partly because the 24-hour society will need to be serviced;and secondly, because more people will be needed to keep the service/leisure industries running.

2. Dinosaur skulls are found in a great range of shapes and sizes, reflecting the different eating habits and lifestyles of a large and varied group of animals that dominated life on Earth for an extraordinary 165 million years.

3. The reduction in children's freedom may also contribute to a weakening of the sense of local community.As fewer children and adults use the streets as pedestrians, these streets become less sociable places.There is less opportunity for children and adults to have the spontaneous exchanges that help to engender a feeling of community.This in itself may exacerbate fears associated with assault and molestation of children, because there are fewer adults available who know their neighbors'children, and who can look out for their safety.

Fewer pedestrians→B→C→D→a weakening sense of community

4. When two different masses of water meet, one will move beneath the other, depending on their relative densities in the subduction process.The densities are determined by temperature and salinity.

5. Foods and medicine, also classified according to their reputed intrinsic nature as yin(cold)and yang(hot),may be taken therapeutically to correct the imbalance resulting from ill health, or to correct imbalance due to the overindulgence in a food manifestly excessively‘hot'or‘cold',or due to age or changed physiological status(for example, pregnancy).

A+B+C+D→imbalance→corrected by foods and medicine

6. When people get up, their blood pressure and heart rate go up and there are hormonal changes in their bodies;all these things can have an adverse effect on the blood system and increase the risk of a clot in the arteries which will cause a heart attack.

Getting up→A+B go up→C→E in the blood system→F increase→may cause a heart attack

7. Even the most remote reefs are at risk of pollution from tourist resorts releasing sewage and ships dumping their rubbish.Tourists too are so numerous that at one popular reef, urine from swimmers, and droppings from fish they feed, have increased the nutrient level in the water so much that algal blooms flourish and threaten the very existence of the colorful corals.

A+B→pollution

C+D→nutrient level in the water increased→E→dying corals

8. When world grain prices are bad, farmers in Asia's uplands turn from rice to cash crops to supplement falling incomes, or clear larger areas of rainforest with catastrophic environmental consequences within just a few years.Cleared rainforest soils are highly erosive;even where they are not, they rapidly become acid and toxic under intense cultivation and plants die, forcing the clearing of everlarge areas.

Bad grain price→A

or B→highly erosive soils

or C→D→plants die→E

9. At the same time, agricultural research worldwide has been contracting as governments, non-government bodies and private donors reduce funding because of domestic economic pressures.This means that at risk is the capacity to solve such problems as rice yield decline and research.

A→reduce funding→B→C

10. You are unaware of what regulates your breathing, heart rate, hormone secretions, or body temperature.You're not concerned about these vital functions because they are usually controlled by a separate nerve system called the autonomic nerve system, which, in turn, is regulated by a master control center, the hypothalamus.

A→B→C such as:D&E&F and G

3.句子重心

与中文不同,英语中强调某个信息点可以不通过词义的加强,只要改变其位置就能起到强调的效果。知道了“常态”和“变态”的句式后,作者的重点就尽在掌握之中。

Can you figure out any difference between the following sentences?If you were the examiner, what question would you ask according to the five sentences?

On the farm, the goats grazed peacefully and were unaware of the approaching hunter.

Question:____________________

The goats grazed peacefully on the farm and were unaware of the approaching hunter.

Question:_____________

The goats grazed peacefully on the farm, unaware of the approaching hunter.

Question:_______________

Grazing peacefully on the farm, the goats were unaware of the approaching hunter.

Question:________________

Since they grazed peacefully on the farm, the goats were unaware of the approaching hunter.

Question:_________________

Conclusion:___________________

4.句子主干

·如何确定句子的主谓宾(SVO)——排除定状补成分

1.舍弃逗号、破折号、括号之间的信息

2.舍弃介宾结构

3.舍弃从句结构

4.舍弃非谓语成分(视具体情况,因为非谓语成分也可充当主语和宾语。)


Exercise E:Figure out the SVO in the following sentences within 5 minutes.

All dinosaurs, whether large or small, quadrupedal or bipedal, fleet-footed or slow-moving, shared a common body plan.

Human activity, most often the filling of reservoirs with extraordinarily large amounts of water, can also cause earthquakes.

Tea, now an everyday beverage in many parts of the world, has over the centuries been an important part of rituals of hospitality both in the home and in wider society.

This ocean circulation, which brings warm waters northward and ships cooler water south, is thought to be responsible for the warming of northern Europe by several degrees.

Anyone who has experienced either the reduced volume of traffic in peak hour during school holidays, or the traffic jams near schools at the end of a school day, will not need convincing about these points.

One significant factor undermining agricultural economies of developing countries has been the farm trade war between the US and the EC.

In recent surveys, when parents in some cities were asked about their own childhood experiences, the majority remembered having more, or far more, opportunities for going out on their own, compared with their own children today.

However, assuming the build-up of greenhouse gases is responsible, and that the warming will continue, scientists—and inhabitants of low-lying coastal areas—would like to know the extent of future sea level rises.

When airline pilot Percy Trezise began to explore the rock art galleries of Cape York Peninsula in the early 1960s—a hobby that was to obsess him for the next 30 years—the consensus of academic opinion was that Australia had been peopled for less than 10,000 years.

Given anything that resembles a well-rounded life—with adults and other children to listen to, talk to, to do things with—their minds will acquire naturally all the skills required for further learning.

Among the problems afflicting a burgeoning world population, overcrowding, poverty and environmental degradation are combining to put at risk the very essence of our survival—food.

Scientists are hoping that one day, with enough data and sufficiently powerful computers, they will be able to calculate, without actually setting fire to anything, the way a fire will spread in any given building.

However, undue reliance on such categories and the consequent‘pigeonholing'of individuals into one of the five categories can result in failure to provide the opportunities for each person to develop.

But the discovery, beginning two years ago, of a vast Aboriginal graveyard at take Victoria near the confluence of the Murray and Darling rivers has thrown even this into doubt.

Recent work by oceanographers, using a new model which takes into account a number of subtle facets of the sea—including vast and complex ocean currents—suggests that the rise in sea level may be less than some earlier estimates had predicted.

Antarctica's long dark winter evokes visions of early explorers barely surviving in huts, their huskies and sleds snowbound outside in the harshest conditions imaginable.

Evidence for this inconsistent level of performance comes from modern research and practice which have shown that with skilled training and opportunity for development, people with intellectual disability have much greater potential for acquiring skills and for participation in community life than previously had been thought possible.

Only Germany, with incentives to business to encourage the employment of older people, and France, with the introduction of legislation making it illegal to use age barriers in recruitment—or to make employees redundant because of their age—have done anything substantive to combat age discrimination.

The origin of gyres lies in the fact that more heat from the Sun reaches the Equator than the Poles, and naturally heat tends to move from the former to the latter.

But the emergence of Emotional Intelligence as a theory suggests that the family situations and other social interactions where social skills were honed in the past are fast disappearing, so that people now sadly need to be re-skilled.

The two strongest predictors of whether children will learn to read easily and well at school are whether they have learned the names and the sounds of the letters of the alphabet before they start school.

The only Australian evidence which possibly indicates that counter-measures targeted specifically at young/novice drivers have been effective comes from evaluations of zero blood alcohol concentration legislation.

5.重新组合

·疑难杂症

有些句子每个单词都能看懂,但就是不理解,究其原因,主要有两个:第一是缺乏相应的文化背景知识或专业知识(此类情况看不懂应放弃);第二是句子为了强调、平衡等因素,各个成分的位置发生了变换,只要找出主谓宾重新排列或按中式思维重组即可。

Example:

Not even books wherewith to inform and train his mind were within his reach.

Even books

with which to inform and train his mind

were not within his reach.


Exercise F:Figure out the meaning of the following sentences.

The sex ration will be favored which maximizes the number of descendants an individual will have.

Everybody includes too much, and nobody excludes too much.

6.其他语法要点

·指代、比较级、数字

Exercise G:Figure out the specific information of the underlined part.

Port cities become industrial, financial and service centers and political capitals because of their water connections and the urban concentration which arises there and later draws to it railways, highways and air routes.

A study by the European Federation for Transport and Environment found that car transport is seven times as costly as rail travel in terms of the external social costs it entails such as congestion, accidents, pollution, loss of cropland and natural habitats, depletion of oil resources, and so on.

Looking at a picture actively prevents children younger than nine from creating a mental image, and can make it difficult for older children.

Age laws merely act as a symbol of a commitment to change societal attitudes, and it is these that must be changed if we are to make progress.

They are immediately labeled by potential employers as difficult characters who would have problems fitting into a new organization and it is for these reasons rather than their age that they are rejected.

This involves dealing with emotions, like jealousy, resentment, anger, etc, that one may have difficulty accepting by, perhaps, giving oneself comfort food, or doing nice things when one is feeling low.Many people do this instinctively by buying chocolate or treating themselves;others are able to wrap themselves in positive thoughts or‘mother themselves'.There are, of course, many people who are incapable of doing this, and so need to be taught.

In wood, which is the source of about 90%of the world's paper production, fibers are bound together by lignin, which gives the unbleached pulp a brown color.

The destructive forces, which produce earthquakes, usually begin deep below the ground, along a fault in weaker areas of the earth's rocky outer shell, where sections of rock repeatedly slide past each other.


Exercise H:Answer the questions in Italic type.

1.The Monash University report into young drivers concluded that younger drivers were more likely to take risks at night.

It is concluded that compared with older drivers, younger drivers take more risks.(TRUE/FALSE/NOT GIVEN)

2.The reasons for these continuing changes are as numerous as the organizations experiencing them.(Which two are in comparison?)

3.When children were given words and pictures, those who seemed to ignore the pictures and pointed at the words learnt more words than the children who pointed at the pictures, but they still learnt fewer words than the children who had no illustrated stimuli at all.

(Please list the students according to their learning efficiency in a descending way.)

4.Measurements have shown that the rate of heat transfer into the ocean by vertical diffusion is far lower in practice than the figures that many modelers have adopted.

(Which is the higher, the measured figure or modelers'assumption?)

5.Research has shown that differences in capability are as wide within age groups as they are between them.

(Is age a definitive factor to one's capability?)

6.Of all the things that humans do, none is more impressive and distinctively human than using language.

The least special thing for humans is the use of language.(TRUE/FALSE/NOT GIVEN)

7.The hotel is the closest to Sydney Airport and is designed to provide the best available accommodation, food and beverage and meeting facilities in Sydney's southern suburbs.

The hotel is the best one to provide accommodation, food and beverage in Sydney.(TRUE/FALSE/NOT GIVEN)

8.Paleontologists believe that both dinosaurs and crocodiles evolved, in the later years of the Triassic Period(c.248-208 million years ago),from creatures called pseudosuchian thecodonts.Lizards, snakes and different types of thecodont are believed to have evolved earlier in the Triassic Period from reptiles known as eosuchians.

Which evolved earliest, snakes, dinosaurs or crocodiles?


Exercise I:Answer the questions in Italic type or complete tables below.

1.The first of the initiatives was an organizational structure with only 3 levels of management—compared to the traditional seven.

How many more levels of management does the old organizational structure have?

2.Between 1990 and 1994 the proportion of consumers claiming to be unaware of or unconcerned about green issues fell from 18 to 10 percent but the number of green spenders among older people and manual workers has risen substantially.

How many more people were concerned about environmental problems in 1994 compared with 1990?

3.AHI has set an expectation that employees will submit at least three suggestions for every one they receive from a customer.

The ratio of a customer's suggestion to that of the employees'is……

4.Absence rates for the six months prior to the incentive scheme ranged from 3.69 percent to 4.32 percent.In the following six months they ranged between 2.87 percent and 3.96 percent.This represents a 20 percent improvement.

The absence rates have decreased to……percent of the original.

5.Even the French, who are proud of their cuisine, are turning to the microwave.Latest Europanel figures show that 38%of French kitchens house a microwave, just under the figure of 40%in western Germany.In Britain, the figure is 57%.

Which country ranks first in the use of microwaves?

6.Statistically, one-person households include single-parent households, the numbers of which are shooting up.The phenomenon is growing.Forty percent of Swedish homes are now one-person households, compared with 29%ten years earlier.In western Germany the figure is 35%(30%ten years ago),in the Netherlands 29%(16%),and in Ireland 21%(17%).

Which country boasted the highest increase rate in one-person households?

7.The Monash researchers also looked at United States road-crash information for 1989 on 6.6 million police-reported crashes involving fatalities, injuries and motor vehicle damage.The researchers looked at a sample of 44,000 crashes.

How many records did the researchers examine,6.6 million or 44,000?

8.Earthquakes can rip apart entire cities and outlying districts, as the 1995 disaster in Kobe, Japan showed.Seismologists, scientists who study earthquakes and related phenomena, have records dating back to 1556,from the Chinese province of Shensi, which indicate that earthquakes have been devastating our world for centuries.In that instance, a major earthquake is estimated to have killed nearly 830,000 people, while destroying whole towns and villages.More recently, a death toll of more than 66,000 was recorded in northern Peru in 1970,and 23,000 died in the Guatemala quake of 1976.

9.Mintel's 1994 survey found that 13 percent of consumers are‘very dark green’,nearly always buying environmentally friendly products,28 percent are‘dark green’,trying‘as far as possible’to buy such products, and 21 percent are‘pale green’—tending to buy green products if they see them.Another 26 percent are‘armchair greens’;they said they care about environmental issues but their concern does not affect their spending habits.Only 10 percent say they do not care about green issues.

Match the items in the left column with those in the middle and the right ones.