Question

    I came home one day recently and, for reasons I don’t quite understand, my living room smelled like my grandmother’s house. Suddenly I felt as if I were 12 years old, happy and relaxed, sitting in her kitchen. I can remember what her house looked like, though it was sold 20 years ago – her three-level plant stand, the plates lining the walls, the window over her sink – but these visual memories don’t have the power that smell does. The funny thing is, I can’t even begin to describe the odor(气味) that was so distinctively hers. The best I can do is this: “It smelled like my grandmother’s house.”

It’s a common experience, and a common linguistic( 语言学的) problem. In cultures worldwide, people have powerful olfactory memories. This odor-memory link is also called “the Proust phenomenon,” after Marcel Proust’s famous description of the feelings aroused by a cake dipped in tea in “Remembrance of Things Past.”

Olfactory memories seem to be more closely bound up with emotions than are visual or auditory ones.

Not all these memories are pleasant, of course, and smells can also trigger feelings of pain.

It is surprisingly hard for English-speakers to describe the odors that occasion such strong emotions, however. English possesses almost no abstract smell words that pick out links or themes among unrelated aromas(芳香).

We have plenty of these in the visual field. “Yellow,” for example, identifies a characteristic that bananas, lemons, some cars, some flowers, old book pages, and the sun all share.

But for odors, we don’t have many more than the vague “musty” (smells old and stale) and “musky” (smells perfumey). We usually have no choice but to say that one thing smells like another – like a banana, like garlic, like diesel fuel.

A few languages, though, do have a rich odor vocabulary. Linguist Asifa Majid has found that the Jahai, the Semaq Beri, and the Maniq, hunter-gatherer groups in Malaysia and Thailand, employ a wide range of abstract smell words and can identify aromas as easily as we can colors. The Jahai have a word, for example, that describes “the seemingly dissimilar smell of petrol, smoke, bat poop, root of wild ginger and wood of wild mango.”

Last year my cat got sprayed by a skunk(臭鼬), and the vet told me to wash its face with coffee to cover the bad smell. Until then, I had never realized that coffee, which I find delicious, smells remarkably like skunk spray, which I do not.

Science has identified the chemicals that both share. They are called mercaptans (硫醇). But in oral English, we have no word for the underlying note that connects these two odors. If the Jahai drank coffee and encountered skunks, I bet they would.

1.The opening paragraph is mainly intended to  .

A.express the writer’s affection for his grandmother

B.direct the readers’ attention to a linguistic problem

C.tell us the odor of the grandmother’s house stayed the same

D.prove smell has a greater power than visual memories

2.Which of the following is related to olfactory memories?

A.Forming an image in mind after seeing the word “injury”.

B.Feeling sympathetic when seeing a sick cat.

C.Dancing to the music upon hearing it played.

D.Missing fried eggs with garlic cooked by mum.

3.The example of the Jahai suggests that  .

A.the Jahai don’t have many words in the visual field

B.English possesses many vague words like “musty” and “musky”

C.the Jahai has more abstract smell words than English

D.skunk and coffee have the same smell, but different functions

4.What can we learn from the passage?

A.The author feels pity about the limitation of his language.

B.English has a wide range of visual and odor vocabulary.

C.Olfactory memories can bring nothing but pleasant feelings.

D.Cultures worldwide always collide with each other.

Answer

1.B

2.D

3.C

4.A

【解析】

这是一篇议论文。文章论述一个常见的语言问题。在世界各地的文化中，人们都有强大的嗅觉记忆。这种气味记忆的联系也被称为“普鲁斯特现象”，以马塞尔普鲁斯特(Marcel Proust)著名的描述“追忆似水年华”中泡在茶里的蛋糕引起的感受而命名。

1.推理判断题。根据第二段第一句It’s a common experience, and a common linguistic( 语言学的) problem.“这是一个常见的经历，也是一个常见的语言问题。”该句中的it指代的就是由此可知，第一段主要是要引导读者注意一个语言问题。故选B。

2.推理判断题。根据第三段中Olfactory memories seem to be more closely bound up with emotions than are visual or auditory ones.“嗅觉记忆似乎比视觉或听觉记忆与情感联系更紧密。”由此推知，D项的“想念妈妈做的大蒜炒鸡蛋” 与嗅觉记忆有关。故选D。

3.推理判断题。根据倒数第三段中the Jahai, the Semaq Beri, and the Maniq, hunter-gatherer groups in Malaysia and Thailand, employ a wide range of abstract smell words and can identify aromas as easily as we can colors. The Jahai have a word, for example, that describes “the seemingly dissimilar smell of petrol, smoke, bat poop, root of wild ginger and wood of wild mango.” Jahai、Semaq Beri和Maniq是马来西亚和泰国的狩猎采集部落，他们使用各种各样的抽象嗅觉词汇，就像我们辨别颜色一样容易辨别气味。例如，Jahai人有一个词，描述“汽油、烟、蝙蝠粪便、野生姜的根和野生芒果的木头的味道似乎不一样”。可知，Jahai的例子表明Jahai有比英语更多的抽象气味词汇。故选C。

4.推理判断题。根据倒数第二段Last year my cat got sprayed by a skunk(臭鼬), and the vet told me to wash its face with coffee to cover the bad smell. Until then, I had never realized that coffee, which I find delicious, smells remarkably like skunk spray, which I do not.“去年我的猫被一只臭鼬喷了，兽医让我用咖啡洗脸来掩盖臭味。在那之前，我从来没有意识到，我觉得很美味的咖啡闻起来像臭鼬喷雾剂，但我没有意识到。”由此可知，作者对自己语言的局限性感到遗憾。故选A。