Functional Styles. Афанасьева Н.Р - 5 стр.

present. At the core of every ice crystal is a minuscule nucleus, a solid         b) Which verb from is particularly useful when scientists want to
particle of matter around which moisture condenses and freezes. Liq-                 focus on what is done rather than who is doing it?
uid water 4 droplets floating in the supercooled atmosphere and free              c) Which verb forms are particularly useful when the scientist is
ice crystals cannot coexist within the same cloud, since the vapor pres-             discussing his or her conclusions and wants to make it clear
sure of ice is less than that of water. This enables the ice crystals to rob         that the results are not yet established as fact?
the liquid droplets of their moisture and grow continuously. The proc-            d) Which structures are particularly useful when scientists want to
ess can be very rapid, quickly creating sizable ice crystals, some of                talk about what happens or would happen under various condi-
which adhere to each other to create a cluster of ice crystals or a snow-            tions?
flake. Simple flakes possess a variety of beautiful forms, usually hex-        6. Referring to the chart find in the text the features of the scientific
agonal, though the symmetrical shapes reproduced in most microscope               prose style.
photography of snowflakes are not usually found in actual snowfalls.
Typically, snowflakes in actual snowfalls consist of broken fragments          TEXT 2
and clusters of adhering ice crystals.
                                                                                    You will read an excerpt form the introduction to the famous
       For a snowfall to continue once it starts, there must be a con-
                                                                               book by Steven Pinker “The Language Instinct”.
stant inflow of moisture to supply the nuclei. This moisture is supplied
by the passage of an airstream over a water surface and its subsequent               Read the text and define its topic.
lifting to higher regions of the atmosphere. The Pacific Ocean is the                 1. … Language is so tightly woven into human experience
source of moisture for most snowfalls west of the Rocky Mountains,             that it is scarcely possible to imagine life without it. Chances are
while the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean feed water vapor into          that if you find two or more people together anywhere on earth,
the air currents over the central and eastern sections of the United           they will soon be exchanging words. When there is no one to talk
                                                                               with, people talk to themselves, to their dogs, even to their plants.
States. Other geographical features also can be the source of moisture
                                                                               In our social relations, the race is not to the swift but to the verbal
for some snowstorms. For example, areas adjacent to the Great Lakes
                                                                               – the spellbinding orator, the silver-tongued seducer, the persua-
experience their own unique lake-effect storms, employing a variation          sive child who wins the battle of wills against a brawnier parent.
of the process on a local scale. In addition, mountainous sections or          Aphasia, the loss of language following brain injury, is devastating,
rising terrain can initiate snowfalls by the geographical lifting of a         and in severe cases family members may feel that the whole per-
moist airstream.                                                               son is lost forever.

                                                                                      2. This book is about human language. Unlike most books
3. What communicative function is performed in this text?                      with “language" in the title, it will not chide you about proper us-
4. Scientific writing is characterized by a number of structures.              age, trace the origins of idioms and slang, or divert you with palin-
   What do you think they are?                                                 dromes, anagrams, eponyms, or those precious names for groups
5. Answer the questions below and find an example for each case in             of animals like "exaltation of larks." For I will be writing not
   the text above.                                                             about the English language or any other language, but about
                                                                               something much more basic: the instinct to learn, speak, and
   a) Which tense would scientists use when describing things that
                                                                               understand language. For the first time in history, there is some-
      are always true?                                                         thing to write about it. Some thirty-five years ago a new science

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