CBSE Class 12 English Sample Paper 2017 Set A

SECTION-A

(READING)

1 Read the passage given below :

1. No student of a foreign language needs to be told that grammar is complex. By changing word sequences and by adding a range of auxiliary verbs and suffixes, we are able to communicate tiny variations in meaning. We can turn a statement into a question, state whether an action has taken place or is soon to take place, and perform many other word tricks to convey subtle differences in meaning. Nor is this complexity inherent to the English language. All languages, even those of so-called 'primitive' tribes have clever grammatical components. The Cherokee pronoun system, for example, can distinguish between 'you and I', 'several other people and I' and 'you, another person and I'. In English, all these meanings are summed up in the one, crude pronoun 'we'. Grammar is universal and plays a part in every language, no matter how widespread it is. So the question which has baffled many linguists is - who created grammar?

2. At first, it would appear that this question is impossible to answer. To find out how grammar is created, someone needs to be present at the time of a language's creation, documenting its emergence. Many historical linguists are able to trace modern complex languages back to earlier languages, but in order to answer the question of how complex languages are actually formed, the researcher needs to observe how languages are started from scratch. Amazingly, however, this is possible.

3. Some of the most recent languages evolved due to the Atlantic slave trade. At that time, slaves from a number of different ethnicities were forced to work together under colonizer's rule. Since they had no opportunity to learn each others languages, they developed a make-shift language called a pidgin. Pidgins are strings of words copied from the language of the landowner. They have little in the way of grammar, and in many cases it is difficult for a listener to deduce when an event happened, and who did what to whom. Speakers need to use circumlocution in order to make their meaning understood.Interestingly, however, all it takes for a pidgin to become a complex language is for a group of children to be exposed to it at the time when they learn their mother tongue. Slave children did not simply copy the strings of words uttered by their elders, they adapted their words to create a new, expressive language. Complex grammar systems which emerge from pidgins are termed creoles, and they are invented by children.

4. Further evidence of this can be seen in studying sign languages for the deaf. Sign languages are not simply a series of gestures; they utilise the same grammatical machinery that is found in spoken languages. Moreover, there are many different languages used worldwide. The creation of one such language was documented quite recently in Nicaragua.Previously, all deaf people were isolated from each other, but in 1979 a new government introduced schools for the deaf. Although children were taught speech and lip reading in the classroom, in the playgrounds they began to invent their own sign system, using the gestures that they used at home. It was basically a pidgin. Each child used the signs differently, and there was no consistent grammar. However, children who joined the school later, when this inventive sign system was already around, developed a quite different sign language. Although it was based on the signs of the older children, the younger children's language was more fluid and compact, and it utilised a large range of grammatical devices to clarify meaning. What is more, all the children used the signs in the same way. A new creole was born.

5. Some linguists believe that many of the world's most established languages were creoles at first. The English past tense –ed ending may have evolved from the verb 'do'. 'It ended' may once have been 'It end-did'. Therefore it would appear that even the most widespread languages were partly created by children. Children appear to have innate grammatical machinery in their brains, which springs to life when they are first trying to make sense of the world around them. Their minds can serve to create logical, complex structures, even when there is no grammar present for them to copy. (711 words)

1.1 On the basis of your understanding of the above passage, answer each of the questions given below by choosing the most appropriate option:

(a) In paragraph 1, why does the writer include information about the Cherokee language?

i. To show how simple, traditional cultures can have complicated grammar structures.

ii. To show how English grammar differs from Cherokee grammar.

iii. To prove that complex grammar structures were invented by the Cherokees.

iv. To demonstrate how difficult it is to learn the Cherokee language.

(b) What can be inferred about the slaves' pidgin language?

i. It contained complex grammar.

ii. It was based on many different languages.

iii. It was difficult to understand, even among slaves.

iv. It was created by the land-owners.

(c) All the following sentences about Nicaraguan sign language are true EXCEPT:

i. The language has been created since 1979.

ii. The language is based on speech and lip reading.

iii. The language incorporates signs which children used at home.

iv. The language was perfected by younger children.

(d) Which idea is presented in the final paragraph?

i. English was probably once a creole.

ii. The English past tense system is inaccurate.

iii. Linguists have proven that English was created by children.

iv. Children say English past tenses differently from adults.

1.2 Answer the following questions briefly:

(a) What is common to all languages?

(b) How can we find out who created grammar?

(c) According to the passage what can be attributed as a consequence of the Atlantic slave trade?

(d) What is pidgin?

(e) What are creoles?

(f) Why does the author say that even the most widespread languages were partly created by children?

1.3 Pick out the words/phrases from the passage which are similar in meaning to the following:

i) simple and temporary (Para 3)1x6=6

ii) uniform (Para 4)1x2 =2

2. Read the passage given below carefully and answer the questions that follow:

1. Close at hand is a bridge over the River Thames, an admirable vantage ground for us to make a survey. We are here to consider facts; now we must fix our eyes upon the procession—the procession of the sons of educated men. There they go, our brothers who have been educated at public schools and universities, mounting those steps, passing in and out of those doors, ascending those pulpits, preaching, teaching,administering justice, practising medicine, transacting business, making money. It is a solemn sight always—a procession, like a caravan crossing a desert....But now, for the past twenty years or so, it is no longer a sight merely, a photograph, or fresco scrawled upon the walls of time, at which we can look with merely an aesthetic appreciation.

2. For there, traipsing along at the tail end of the procession, we go ourselves. And that makes a difference. We who have looked so long at the pageant in books, or from a curtained window watched educated men leaving the house at about nine-thirty to go to an office, returning to the house at about six-thirty from an office, need look passively no longer. We too can leave the house, can mount those steps, pass in and out of those doors,...make money, administer justice.

3. Nobody will dare contradict us then; we shall be the mouthpieces of the divine spirit—a solemn thought, is it not? We are here, on the bridge, to ask ourselves certain questions. And they are very important questions; and we have very little time in which to answer them. The questions that we have to ask and to answer about that procession during this moment of transition are so important that they may well change the lives of all men and women for ever. For we have to ask ourselves, here and now, do we wish to join that procession, or don’t we? On what terms shall we join that procession? Above all, where is it leading us, the procession of educated men?

4. As you know from your own experience, and there are facts that prove it, the daughters of educated men have always done their thinking from hand to mouth; not under green lamps at study tables in the cloisters of secluded colleges. They have thought while they stirred the pot, while they rocked the cradle. It was thus that they won us the right to our brand-new sixpence. It falls to us now to go on thinking; how are we to spend that sixpence? Think we must. Let us think in offices; in omnibuses; while we are standing in the crowd watching Coronations and Lord Mayor’s Shows; let us think...in the gallery of the House of Commons; in the Law Courts; let us think at baptisms and marriages and funerals.(465 words)

Adapted from ‘Three Guineas’, Virginia Woolf

2.1 On the basis of your understanding of the passage, complete the statements given below by choosing the most appropriate option:

1. The main purpose of the passage is to:

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