Man is the only animal that laughs. Why is this true? What makes us respond as we do to pleasurable experiences? What is the his

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问题     Man is the only animal that laughs. Why is this true? What makes us respond as we do to pleasurable experiences? What is the history of this "happy【C1】______" , as someone once termed it, and just what is its function?
    We are not short of theories to explain the mystery; for centuries, biologists, philosophers, psychologists, and medical men have sought a definitive explanation of laughter. One writer【C2】______that its function is to【C3】______others or to prove to be better than them by insulting them. Another took the opposite view: that we laugh in order not to cry. A psychologist offered the explanation that laughter functions as【C4】______for painful experiences, and that it serves to defend a person against what the psychologist termed "the many minor pains to which man is【C5】______". In the 17th century a writer set forth the theory that we laugh when we compare ourselves with others and find ourselves superior;【C6】______, we laugh at the weakness of others.
    Virtually every theory has been concerned with either the structure or the function of laughter, whereas relatively few have been devoted to the question of its【C7】______. I propose to offer a theory which, so far as I am aware, has not previously been set forth; that only those animals capable of【C8】______are capable of laughter; and that therefore man, being the only animal that speaks, is the only animal that laughs.
    Those of us who have observed chimpanzees closely feel quite confident that the chimpanzee occasionally exhibits behavior that looks very much like a primitive human laughter. This behavior, however, has been observed only in a human context;【C9】______it occurs under natural conditions is dubious; but【C10】______that under any conditions an ape is capable of such behavior is of more than passing interest—for does it not indicate that early man had the basics of laughter?
【C7】

选项 A、mechanism
B、rationale
C、source
D、origin

答案D

解析 考查对上下文的理解。本题空格所在的句子意思是:“几乎每一种理论都讲到‘笑’的构造和作用,而研究‘笑’的______问题的研究却相对较少”。因此,空格部分应填的词汇应该与构造和作用无关。A.mechanism(构造,机制)与“structure”意思相近,故不符合题意。短文第2段在提到“笑”的作用的时候,解释了人们为什么笑,故B.rationale(理由,逻辑依据)不合逻辑。C.source和D.origin均指来源。前者多指起因或资料来源,后者多表起源。文章开始就提到“笑”的历史,后面部分又提到黑猩猩的笑,可知作者是研究“笑”的起源的。故选D。
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