填空题. Sign has become a scientific hot 11 . Only in the past 20 years have specialists in language study realized that signed languages are unique—a speech of the hand. They offer a new way to 12 how the brain generates and understands language, and 13 new light on an old scientific 14 : whether language, complete with grammar, is something that we are born with, or it is a learned behavior. The current interest in sign language has 15 in the pioneering work of one rebel teacher at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., the world's only liberal arts university for deaf people. When Bill Stokoe went to Gallaudet to teach English, the school 16 him in a course in signing. But Stokoe noticed something 17 : among themselves, students signed differently from his classroom teacher. Stokoe had been taught a sort of gesture code, each movement of the hands representing a word in English. But Stokoe believed the "hand talk" his students used looked richer. He wondered: Might deaf people actually have a(n) 18 language? And could that language be unlike any other on Earth? It was 1955, when even deaf people 19 their signing as "substandard". Stokoe's idea was academic heresy (异端邪说). It is 37 years later. Stokoe—now devoting his time to writing and editing books on ASL—is explaining how he started a 20 . For decades educators fought his idea that signed languages are natural languages like English, French and Japanese. A. controversy B. dig C. dismissed D. genuine E. probe F. revolution G. spot H. roots I. throw J. odd K. real L. considered M. button N. origins O. enrolled