A
From the cold Arctic to the African plains, every society seems to have some form of music as part of their culture. Music is so common and widespread that most people don’t even question it anymore. But until recently, there were researchers who doubted it: How could we know that music was really a part of all known societies?
Now, Harvard researchers, Samuer Mehr and Manvir Singh, have found further evidence to support the argument. They gathered music from different countries, media and time periods, and collected descriptions of many different pieces of music. Rather than focusing on music first and then looking at where it could be found, they started by studying a record of detailed descriptions of more than three hundred known global societies, and found that all of them have music as part of their culture.
To see if people could recognize the functions of songs from around the world, the researchers also created a listening experiment in which people tried to guess the behavioral context of a song. This went surprisingly well. Particularly music that was intended for dancing or to calm a baby was easy to recognize as either dance music or lullabies. Love songs were a bit more difficult to qualify, because they tend to be very diverse even within cultures.
This systematic study of connections sounds like the way that researchers in other fields would study biological patterns. “There’s a field known as cultural phylogenetics, ” says Singh. Whereas biological characteristics are only received from parent to child, cultural characteristics (like music) are also shared between people of the same generation. That makes it much more difficult to figure out where the characteristic has come from.
“Finally, ” Singh says, “We still don’t know why music developed gradually. Our study shows that humans everywhere share cognitive mechanisms (认知机制) that make certain sounds seem appropriate in particular contexts. ”
【文章大意】本文是一篇议论文, 介绍世界各地的音乐拥有的共同特点, 同时成为各种文化不可或缺的组成部分。
1. What does the underlined word “it” in Paragraph 1 refer to?
A. The fact that music is part of every culture.
B. The question whether music is widely spread.
C. The doubt whether further research has been done.
D. The idea that Africa and the Arctic have cool music.
【解析】选A。词义猜测题。根据第一段第一句“From the cold Arctic to the African plains, every society seems to have some form of music as part of their culture. ”可知, 每个社会群体似乎都把某种音乐形式当作他们自己文化的一个部分, 由此推断代词it指代音乐是每种文化的一部分这一事实。
2. What did Mehr and Singh do first?
A. They found out further evidence.
B. They studied various societies.
C. They sought the origins of music.
D. They focused mainly on music.
【解析】选B。细节理解题。根据第二段第三句“Rather than focusing on music first and then looking at where it could be found, they started by studying a record of detailed descriptions of more than three hundred known global societies”可知, Mehr和Singh首先做的事情是研究全球三百多个已知社会群体的详细描述的记录。
3. What’s the purpose of the listening experiment?
A. To comfort a baby.
B. To pick out love songs.
C. To create a context.
D. To tell functions of songs.
【解析】选D。细节理解题。根据第三段“To see if people could recognize the functions of songs from around the world, the researchers also created a listening experiment in which. . . ”可知, 听乐辨析实验的目的是看人们能否对世界各地的音乐功能加以辨别。
