During the months of night, fifty degrees below zero, her cubs would be born, the great task of motherhood was already begun, the time soon coming when she would bury herself deep down under the snow to give birth. From then until the day when she and the cubs burrowed up into daylight again she would not eat. She and they must live on what she had stored in her body during the summer, and on what she could catch and eat now. She must finish fattening herself up for the ordeal, and there was not much time left.
She was not clearly aware of what was happening in her body, but the instinct was there to love the unborn cubs, to prepare for them and protect them; she did not risk her body in careless adventures as she would at other times.
But food? Food--
Suddenly, away down the ice-field, she saw a blackish slug on the ice--a seal. It was essential to catch him. In a moment she had decided on her approach, and slipped silently into the water to cut off his line of retreat. The ice rocked as her great weight left it.
By a series of cunning dives and approaches, and keeping under the shoulder of ice, she got near to the seal. Breathing carefully, every nerve keyed to the task of silent approach, ready to spring--to dive--to slaughter, she slid nearer---nearer---
Suddenly the seal saw her. Terror convulsed his face.
He swung away from her, humping madly along. The bear lunged up out of the water, on to the ice, on to the terrified seal.
The water slashed off her everywhere like a tidal wave. There was a flurry of snow and water and fighting seal. His quick struggling body flapped under her as she slew him. Blood spurted on to the snow.
When the seal was dead, the bear attended first to herself, getting rid of the wet from her coat before it could freeze, although oil had kept off the frost so far.
Now for the seal. She ripped up the body, turning back the skin and blubber, letting out a cloud of steam, and ate greedily of the hot crimson meat. Seal meat was her favorite, full of flavor, a hot meal, not like the white icy flakes of cod.
Presently she saw upright seals coming along the shore. They were rather rare creatures, these, and dangerous for all they were so weak. The places where they lived had light and noise, and smelled full of good food. The she-bear often drew near the places, attracted by those smells. She hunted these land-seals too, and ate them when she could. They were not like the sea-seals, though. They wore seal fur, and their skins were rubbed with seal blubber, but there was a different taste inside.
We learn from the passage that after the polar bear gave birth to her babies ______ before the months of night were over.
A. the bear would get out of the snow and get something for the babies to eat
B. the babies would get out of the snow and live on their own
C. the bear would stay in the snow and eat nothing
D. the babies would stay with her and eat nothing
Fields found that when the bacteria accounted for 100 parts per million of the grain, the
A. rose by 4℃
B. dropped by 4℃
C. rose by 5℃
D. dropped by 5℃
According to the passage, "Sabrina"is a clear-cut feminine name for all of the following reasons EXCEPT that ______.
A. it begins with a gentle sibilant /s/
B. it has three syllables
C. the stress falls on the second syllable
D. it has a strong /I/ vowel
Some interesting recent research by a team from MRC Applied Psychology Unit at Cambridge analysed the sound structure of a large number of first names, and found some interesting differences between men and women. It seems the sexes do not sound the same. The claims are of course limited by the size of their sample--1,667 entries taken from a dictionary of English first names--but the claims they make can easily be checked against our intuitions, and they seem very plausible:
-- Female first names tend to be longer than males, in terms of the number of syllables they contain. Males are much more likely to have a monosyllabic first name (Bob, Jim Fred, Frank, John), and much less likely to have a name of three or more syllables (Christopher, Nicholas). By contrast, there are few monosyllabic female names in the list (Ann, Joan, May) , and many of them are trisyllabic or more (Katherine, Elizabeth, Amanda).
-- 95% of male names have a first syllable which is strongly stressed, whereas only 75% of female names show this pattern. It is not difficult to think of female names which begin with an unstressed syllable (Patricia, Elizabeth, Rebecca, Michelle), but male names are few and far between (Jerome, Dementrius). In fact, none of the popular British male names in top-2-1ists from the past 75 years has had an unstressed initial syllable--and only three American names.
-- The stressed syllables of female names tend to make much more use of the high front vowel / I/, such as Lisa, Tina, Celia, Maxine, and the archetypal Fifi and Mimi. Male names in /I/ are far less common (Steve, Keith, Peter).
-- Female pet names tend to be longer than male. A dissyllabic pet name could be either male or female, but a monosyllabic one is much more likely to be male. Jackie could be either sex, but Jack is male. Several other pairs share this expectancy, such as Bill /Billie and Bob/Bollie.
-- Female names are much more likely to end in a vowel, as with Linda, Judy, Deborah, Barbara. If not a vowel, the last sound will very likely be a continuant, especially a nasal (Jean, Kathleen, Sharon, Ann). By contrast, plosives are much more likely to be found in male endings (Bob, David, Dick, Jack).
It is of course difficult, perhaps impossible, to explain these trends. Could the sound-symbolic associations of /I/, such as smallness and brightness, explain the bias of that vowel? Can we relate the trend towards use of an initial stressed syllable to greater masculine aggressiveness? One thing is sure: it is much more difficult to generalize safely about female names. Popular male names are used much more predictably. There are several male names which have appeared on every list of the top 20 names in recent times (e. g. John, David), but no one female name appears on all lists. People are much readier to be inventive and different with female names.
The writer adopts a (n) ______ tone to report the findings of the research in the sound structure of first names.
A. assertive
B. doubtful
C. authoritative
D. cautious