Questões de Inglês - Grammar - Pronouns - Quantifiers
No trecho do terceiro quadrinho “We’re not that dumb!”, o termo em destaque pode ser substituído, sem alteração de sentido, por
[1]The small Turkish town of Kuşköy, tucked into
an isolated valley on the rainy, mountainous
Black Sea coast of Turkey, looks ........ like the
other villages in the region. Kuşköy is
[5] remarkable not for how it looks but for how it
sounds: here, the roar of the water is ........
accompanied by loud, lilting whistles – the
distinctive tones of the local language. Over
the past half-century, linguists and reporters,
[10] curious about what locals call “bird language,”
have occasionally struggled up the footpaths
and dirt roads that lead to Kuşköy. So its
thousand or so residents were not surprised
when biopsychologist Onur Güntürkün
[15] showed up and asked them to participate in a
study.
Whistled languages, although unusual,
have been ........ for centuries. Most of the
examples that have been documented arose
[20] in places where it might otherwise be hard to
communicate at a distance. All are based on
spoken languages: Kuşköy’s version adapts
standard Turkish syllables into piercing tones
that can be heard from more than half a mile
[25] away.
How does the brain handle a language that
renders words as something like music?
Although neuroscientists have long
understood that brain functions do not divide
[30] ........ between the left and right hemispheres,
the former appears to play a consistently
dominant role in our understanding of
language regardless of whether the language
is tonal or atonal, spoken or written, signed
[35] with the hands or clicked with the tongue.
The right hemisphere, meanwhile, seems to
govern our understanding of pitch, melody,
and rhythm. Güntürkün tested this cranial
division of labor with thirty-one volunteers, all
[40] fluent in both spoken and whistled Turkish, to
listen to pairs of different syllables played
simultaneously through headphones, one in
each ear. When he gave them spoken
Turkish, the participants usually understood
[45] the syllable played through the right speaker,
suggesting that the left hemisphere was
processing the sound. When he switched to
whistled Turkish, however, the participants
understood both syllables in roughly equal
[50] measure, suggesting that both hemispheres
played significant roles in the early stages of
comprehension.
Although the technique used isn’t as
precise as laboratory techniques, his results
[55] are tantalizing. “They tell us that the
organization of our brain, in terms of its
asymmetrical structure, is not as fixed as we
assume.” “The way information is given to us
appears to change the architecture of our
[60] brain in a radical way.” He now wonders
whether people whose spoken-language
comprehension is damaged by a lefthemisphere
stroke could learn to understand
a whistled dialect, much as some people with
[65] stroke-damaged speech can communicate by
singing.
The opportunity to study whistled Turkish,
however, is fading. In 1964, a stringer for
the Times reported that children in Kuşköy
[70] were learning to communicate by whistling
before they started school, and that both men
and women regularly gossiped, argued, and
even courted via whistle. Three years later, a
team of visiting linguists observed that
[75] whistling was widely used in both the village
and the surrounding countryside. But
Güntürkün found that few, if any, young
women had learned the language, and that,
although some young men were fluent
[80] whistlers, they had learned the skill as
teenagers, more out of pride than any
practical need. In a small town filled with nosy
neighbors, texting affords a level of privacy
that whistling never did.
Adapted from: NIJHUIS, M. The Whistled Language of Northern Turkey. Available at: . Accessed on August, 20th, 2015.
The word all (l. 21) refers to
According to a government study released this
week, the number of Brazilians suffering from obesity is
growing. And the trend toward the fuller figure is most
prevalent among women. “Obesity among women had
[5] stabilized in previous studies, and now there is an
expressive increase,” says Deborah Malta, the study’s
coordinator. “That is very worrying.”
The study covered many health-related topics and
offered some contradictory figures as well. Although
[10] Brazilians are getting fatter, they are eating less red meat
and more fruits and vegetables, Malta reports. They are
smoking less and taking more preventive tests such as
mammograms and pap smears. But they are using less
sunscreen and drinking more, especially to excess and
[15] often when driving.
Nevertheless, in body-conscious Brazil, the nation
of Gisele Bündchen, plastic surgery and minuscule
bikinis, it was the obesity figures that caused the most
anxiety. When the New York Times reported in 2005
[20] that Brazilians were getting fatter, the correspondent
came under attack in the media as a gay, Brazilian-hating
heretic.
According to Malta, Brazilians are relatively slim
compared with their counterparts in the West. “I think
[25] Brazilians are still worried about their bodies. When we
compare ourselves to the rest of the world, we are still
much thinner,” she tells TIME. “And remember, this is
not just Brazilians that are getting fatter — this is a
worldwide phenomenon.”
[30] Independent experts, however, caution against such
nationalistic one-upmanship. Already one-quarter of
hospital beds are taken up by people suffering from
weight-related ailments such as heart attacks, back
surgeries and hip and joint replacements, says Luiz
[35] Vicente Berti, president of the Brazilian Society of
Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery. Unless preventive action
is taken to educate people, he warns, Brazil faces a
sick and expensive future. “If we don’t teach people how
to eat properly and exercise, then in 10 years no one
[40] will have the money to pay the hospital bills that
will arise,” Berti says, adding that the number of
stomach-reduction surgeries carried out in Brazil had
risen 500%. “The U.S. can’t solve its problem, and it is
the biggest economy in the world.”
DOWNIE, Andrew . Brazilian obesity : the big girl from Ipanema. São Paulo Friday, Apr. 10, 2009. Disponível em: <http://www.time.com/time/ world/article/>. Acesso em: 3 nov. 2010.
The only pair of opposites is in alternative
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