Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.
Many procedures are available for obtaining data about a language. 【小题1】range from a carefully planned, intensive field investigation of a foreign language in a foreign country to a casual study of one’s own mother tongue carried out in an armchair at home. To do this, someone has to act as a source of language data-an informant. Informants are ideally native speakers of a language,【小题2】provide words and sentences for analysis and other kinds of information about the language.
Many factors must be considered when selecting informants—【小题3】one is working with a single speaker or more people interacting. Age, sex, social background and other aspects of identity are important, as these factors are known to influence the type of the language used. The topic of conversation and the characteristics of the social setting are also highly relevant,【小题4】are the personal qualities of the informants.
Today, researchers often tape-record informants. This enables the linguist’s claims about the language【小题5】(check), and provides a way of making those claims more accurate as difficult pieces of speech can be listened to repeatedly. But obtaining naturalistic, good-quality data is never easy. People talk abnormally when they know they【小题6】(record), and sound quality can be poor. A variety of tape-recording procedures have thus been devised to minimize the ‘observer’s paradox’, a situation in which people feel strange to each other. Some recordings are made【小题7】the speakers being aware of the fact—a procedure that obtains very natural data, though ethical objections must be expected. Alternatively, attempts can be made to make the speaker forget about the recording,【小题8】keeping the tape recorder out of sight, or using radio microphones. A useful technique is to introduce a topic that quickly involves the speaker, and stimulates a natural language style, like asking older informants about how times have changed in their locality.
An audio tape recording does not solve all the linguist’s problems, however. Speech is often ambiguous or unclear. Where possible, therefore, the recording has to be supplemented by the observer’s【小题9】(write)comments on the non-verbal behavior of the participants, and about the context in general. A facial expression, for example, can dramatically alter the meaning of【小题10】is said. Video recordings avoid these problems to a large extent, but even they have limitations as the camera cannot be everywhere, and transcription always benefits from any additional commentary provided by an observer.
