单项选择题

Linguistic researchers have gradually come to understand how and why so many teenagers sound like Dizzee Rascal, a rapper from Bow in east London. They call this (1) , changing argot (俚语) Multicultural London English (MLE).
When MLE first (2) , linguists believed it was a ham version of the way West Indians speak English. In the early 1980s "West Indians who had spoken Cockney suddenly started to speak (3) ," explains Paul Kerswill of York University. Young Afro-Caribbean men (4) have adopted a new style of speech as they sought to forge a(n) (5) in an often hostile society. Others were thought to have (6) them.
But (7) being cod-Jamaican, MLE is now thought to be a hybrid (混合的) (8) that emerged from the mixing of West Indians, South Asians and speakers of Cockney and Estuary English.
Researchers have found that MLE (9) from place to place. Variants have emerged in (10) cities with many immigrants, such as Birmingham and Manchester. Children tend to (11) MLE at secondary school. It is more common—and more strongly accented—among boys (12) among girls. The grammar that tends to (13) MLE is increasingly uniform: for example the use of " we wasn’t" (14) place of "we weren’t".
Linguists are most excited by (15) MLE is doing to the rhythm of speech. English is usually spoken with a stress-timed rhythm, in which syllables are stressed at regular (16) Speakers of MLE speak with a syllable-timed rhythm, in which all syllables are (17) roughly the same time and stress, as in French or Japanese. Syllable-timed speech is a (18) of languages that have come into contact (19) other languages. Versions of it may have (20) in multicultural places such as Hackney for centuries, thinks Mr. Kerswill.

8（）

点击查看答案&解析