2021年11月28日托福阅读真题+题目+答案：Characteristics of Sixteenth-Century European Towns

2021年11月28日托福阅读真题+题目+答案：Characteristics of Sixteenth-Century European Towns

Paragraph 1: Size, legal status, or presence of fortifications (walls or other defensive barriers) might seem natural criteria in defining the distinction between town and village in sixteenth-century Europe. Ultimately, however, it was none of these, but rather "urban" functions that distinguished even the smallest towns from villages. Some villages could be relatively large. Some had their own walls. On the other hand, many towns were unfortified and lacked legal status as a town.

1. In paragraph 1, why does the author mention that some villages in sixteenth-century Europe could be relatively large?

O To help explain why some villages needed their own fortifications as much as towns did

O To show why towns cannot be distinguished from villages on the basis of size

O To suggest that the distinction between villages and towns is an artificial one

O To argue that legal status is a better criterion for distinguishing between towns and villages than size is

Paragraph 2: Early modern towns were multifunctional. Whether they were large or small this was what they shared, and this in turn is what distinguished them most from rural settlements. Not all of these functions were economic, but the economic functions were the foundations upon which all others were constructed. Only newly established military towns, such as Palmanova in northeastern Italy or Neuf-Brisach on the Franco-Imperial border, and the occasional ecclesiastical center were an exception to this pattern. Without the money and demographic momentum generated by economic activity, towns were not selected as the location for administrative centers, law courts, capital cities, colleges and universities, cathedrals, or the sites for religious orders. They might be transformed in the process, as were Madrid, when it was chosen definitively by Philip ll in 1561 as the capital of Spain, and Weilburg in Hesse, which was reconstructed for a similar purpose in the late seventeenth century by Count Johann Ernst of Nassau, but the preconditions for growth were already there.

2. The word "momentum" in the passage is closest in meaning to

O foundation

O stability

O push

O diversity

3. According to paragraph 2, what made Palmanova and Neuf-Brisach exceptions to the usual pattern for establishing towns?

O They were both ecclesiastical centers rather than economic centers.

O Their foundations were military rather than economic.

O They could not be clearly distinguished from rural settlements.

O Neither was selected as the location for an administrative center.

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