2. 职称英语
  3. What was the first language? How did language begin, andwhere and when? Unt

What was the first language? How did language begin, andwhere and when? Unt

游客2024-11-16  46
问题     What was the first language? How did language begin, and
where and when? Until recently, a sensible linguist would likely to【S1】______
respond to such questions with a shrug and a sigh. As Bernard
Campbell states flatly in Humankind Emerging, "We simply do not
know, or never will, how or when language began. " It’s hard to【S2】______
imagine a cultural phenomenon that’s less important than the【S3】______
development of language. And yet no human attribute offers less
conclusive evidence regarded its origins. The mystery, says Christine【S4】______
Kenneally in her book The First Word, lies in the nature of the
spoken word: For all their power to wound and seduce, speech is our【S5】______
most ephemeral creation; it is little more than air. It exits the body
as series of puffs and dissipates quickly into the atmosphere. There【S6】______
are no verbs preserved in amber, no ossified nouns, and no
prehistorical shrieks forever spread-eagled in the lava that took them
in surprise. The absence of such evidence certainly hasn’t【S7】______
discouraged speculating in the origins of language. Over the【S8】______
centuries, many theories have been put out, and just about all of【S9】______
them have been challenged, discounted, and often ridiculed. Each
theory accounts for only a small part of whatever we know about【S10】______
language. [br] 【S8】
选项
答案 speculating—speculation
解析 名词形式错误。该句意为“证据的缺失并没有阻碍对语言起源的思索。”speculate的名词形式为speculation。discourage可以直接接名词，但不能直接接动名词，常用表达为discourage sb．from doing sth．，故将speculating改为speculation。
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