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时间状语强对比
题干中问A时间有什么特征，原文中没有明说，但给了A的强对比时间B的特征，将B的特点取非，即是A的特征。通常情况下，在一篇文章开始，或者一个理论刚刚提出的时候，如果出现了时间壮语，则是出题率很高的一处语言点。如，now, new, nowadays, current ideas…和过去形成强对比;once, until recently, past…和现在形成强对比。如果给出一个不早不晚的明确时间，如in 1960’s，那么和它之前、之后比较都有可能。
下面以举一个具体事例：
In the early 1950’s, historians who studied pre-industrial Europe (which we may define here as Europe in the period from roughly 1300 to 1800) began, for the first time in large numbers, to investigate more of the pre-industrial European population than the 2 or 3 percent who comprised the political and social elite: the kings, generals, judges, nobles, bishops, and local magnates who had hitherto usually filled history books. ……
One way out of this dilemma was to run to the records of legal courts, for here the voices of the non-elite can most often be heard, as witnesses, plaintiffs, and defendants. These documents have acted as “a point of entry into the mental world of the poor.” Historians such as Le Roy Ladurie have used the documents to extract case histories, which have illuminated the attitudes of different social group (these attitudes include, but are not confined to, attitudes toward crime and the law) and have revealed how the authorities administered justice. ……
The extraction of case histories is not, however, the only use to which court records may be put. Historians who study pre-industrial Europe have used the records to establish a series or categories of crime and to quantify indictments that were issued over a given number of years. ……
The author suggests that, before the early 1950’s, most historians who studied pre-industrial Europe did which of the following?
(A) failed to make distinctions among members of the pre-industrial European political and social elite
(B) used investigatory methods that were almost exclusively statistical in nature
(C) inaccurately estimated the influence of the pre-industrial European political and social elite
(D) confined their work to a narrow range of the pre-industrial European population
(E) tended to rely heavily on birth, marriage and death records
分析：
这篇文章在开头段就提到“50年代早期，研究欧洲前工业时期历史的学者第一次开始大规模地研究人口总数97%的普通人民群众”。题目中所问的是在50年代之前的情况，这正与50年代的情况形成了强对比。所以，正确答案应该是与50年代的情况相反的信息，在50年代，就有了将近97%的普通人民群众，说明这是一个很大的比率，将近100%。那么，在50年代之前，可以肯定的是没有50年代进步，所以，人数一定比50年代要少，可能是很少的以部分。这样，通过这样的强对比，我们可以确定答案A是正确的，即“50年代之前的学者将其研究局限于前工业时期欧洲人口的一小部分”。
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