试题出自试卷《辽宁工程技术大学2012年博士入学考试试题（秋季）》

Despite the modern desire to be easy and casual, Americans from time to time give thought to the language they use, to grammar, vocabulary, and official languages. And, as on other issues, they divide into two parties. The larger, which includes everybody from the plain people to the professional writer, takes it for granted that there is a right way to use words and construct sentences and many wrong ways. The right way is believed to be clearer, simpler, more logical, and hence more likely to prevent error and confusion. Good writing is easier to read; it offers a pleasant combination of sound and sense.
Against this majority view is the doctrine of an opposing minority, who make up for their small number by their great learning and their place of authority in the school system and the world of scholarship. They are the professional linguists, who deny that there is such a thing as correctness. The language, they say, is what anybody and everybody speaks. Hence there must be no interference with what they regard as a product of nature. They denounce all attempts at guiding choice; their governing principle is summed up in the title of a speech by a distinguished member of the profession: “Can Native Speakers of a Language Make Mistakes?”
Within the profession of linguists there are, of course, fighting factions, but, on this conception of language as a natural growth with which it is criminal to interfere, they are at one. In their arguments one finds appeals to feelings of social equality (all words and forms are equally good) and individual freedom (one may do what one likes with one’s own speech). These beliefs further suggest that the desire for correctness, the very idea of better or worse in speech, is what is left over from noble and humble times. To the linguists, change is the only rule to be obeyed. They consider it to be equal with life and accuse their critics of being clock-reverses, enemies of freedom, menaces to “life”.
1. The larger of the two groups mentioned believes that _____.
2. According to the passage, the professional writer _____.
3. The professional linguists _____.
4. The desire for correctness is considered by some people to be _____.
5. The only rule to be obeyed is _____.