Question

The Queen’s English is now sounding less upper-class, a scientific study of the Queen’s Christmas broadcasts had found. Researchers have studied each of her messages to the Commonwealth countries since 1952 to find out the change in her pronunciation from the noble Upper Received to the Standard Received.

Jonathan Harrington, a professor at Germany’s University of Munich, wanted to discover whether accent (口音) changers recorded over the past half century would take place within one person. “As far as I know, there just is nobody else for whom there is this sort of broadcast records,” he said.

He said the noble way of pronouncing vowels (元音) had gradually lost ground as the noble upper-class accent over the past years. “Her accent sounds slightly less noble than it did 50 years ago. But these are very, very small and slow changes that we don’t notice from year to year.”

“We may be able to relate it to changes in the social classes,” he told The Daily Telegraph, a British newspaper. “In 1952 she would have been heard saying ‘thet men in the bleck het’. Now it would be ‘that man in the black hat’. And ‘hame’ rather than ‘home’. In the 1950s she would have been ‘lorst’, but by the 1970s ‘lost’.”

The Queen’s broadcast is a personal message to the Commonwealth countries. Each Christmas, the 10-minute broadcast is put on TV at 3 pm in Britain as many families are recovering from their traditional turkey lunch. (传统火鸡午餐).

The results were published (发表) in the Journal of Phonetics.

45. The Queen’s broadcasts were chosen for the study mainly because ______.

    A. she has been Queen for many years

    B. she has a less upper-class accent now

    C. her speeches are familiar to many people

    D. her speeches have been recorded for 50 years

46. Which of the following is an example of a less noble accent in English?

   A. “duaty”                  B. “citee”                 C. “hame”        D. “lorst”

47. We may infer from the text that the Journal of Phonetics is a magazine on _________.

     A. speech sounds                                   B. Christmas customs

 C. TV broadcasting                                 D. personal messages

48. What is the text mainly about?

A. The relationship between accents and social classes.

B. The Queen’s Christmas speeches on TV.

C. The changes in a person’s accent.

D. The recent development of the English language.

Answer 1

45.【标准答案】D。细节理解题。第二段最后一句As far as I know, there just is nobody else for whom there is this sort of broadcast records可知只有女王的讲话录音完整，具有研究的价值。

46.【标准答案】B。细节判断题。从文章第三段第一句He said the noble way of pronouncing vowels (元音) had gradually lost ground as the noble upper-class accent over the past years.可知，研究者主要是研究女王发音的元音的变化。四个选项中只有B项中的元音没有变化，其余三个在第四段可以看出现在都有变化。

47.【标准答案】A。推理判断题。从文章德内容得知，研究者是研究女王50年来口音的变化，属于语音类的研究，所以研究成果应刊登在语音学杂志上。由此推断Journal of Phonetics是一本有关语言方面的杂志。

48【标准答案】C。主旨大意题。文章开头一句The Queen’s English is now sounding less upper-class, a scientific study of the Queen’s Christmas broadcasts had found.就是文章的中心句，其后内容就是围绕这一话题展开的，故主要是讲述一个人口音随着时间的变化。