首页
登录
职称英语
It is hard to conceive of a language without nouns or verbs. But that is just
It is hard to conceive of a language without nouns or verbs. But that is just
游客
2023-12-17
49
管理
问题
It is hard to conceive of a language without nouns or verbs. But that is just what Riau Indonesian is, according to David Gil, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary .Anthropology, in Leipzig. Dr. Gil has been studying Riau for the past 12 years. Initially, he says, he struggled with the language, despite being fluent in standard Indonesian. However, a breakthrough came when he realized that what he had been thinking of as different parts of speech were, in fact, grammatically the same. For example, the phrase "the chicken is eating" translates into colloquial Riau as "ayam makan". Literally, this is "chicken eat". But the same pair of words also have meanings as diverse as "the chicken is making somebody eat", or "somebody is eating where the chicken is". There are, he says, no modifiers that distinguish the tenses of verbs. Nor are there modifiers for nouns that distinguish the definite from the indefinite. Indeed, there are no features in Riau Indonesian that distinguish nouns from verbs. These categories, he says, are imposed because the languages that western linguists are familiar with have them.
This sort of observation flies in the face of conventional wisdom about what language is. Most linguists are influenced by the work of Noam Chomsky---in particular, his theory of "deep grammar". According to Dr. Chomsky, people are born with a sort of linguistic template in their brains. This is a set of rules that allows children to learn a language quickly, but also imposes constraints and structure on what is learnt. Evidence in support of this theory includes the tendency of children to make systematic mistakes which indicate a tendency to impose rules on what turn out to be grammatical exceptions (e. g. "I dided it" instead of "I did it"). There is also the ability of the children of migrant workers to invent new languages known as creoles out of the grammatically incoherent pidgin spoken by their parents. Exactly what the deep grammar consists of is still not clear, but a basic distinction between nouns and verbs would probably be one of its minimum requirements.
Dr. Gil contends, however, that there is a risk of unconscious bias leading to the conclusion that a particular sort of grammar exists in an unfamiliar language. That is because it is easier for linguists to dis cover extra features in foreign languages--for example tones that change the meaning of words, which are common in Indonesian but do not exist in European languages--than to realize that elements which are taken for granted in a linguist’s native language may be absent from another. Despite the best intentions, he says, there is a tendency to fit languages into a mould. And since most linguists are westerners, that mould is usually an Indo-European language from the West.
It needs not, however, be a modern language. Dr. Gil’s point about bias is well illustrated by the history of the study of the world’s most widely spoken tongue. Many of the people who developed modern linguistics had had an education in Latin and Greek. As a consequence, English was often described until well into the 20th century as having six different noun cases, because Latin has six. Only relatively recently did grammarians begin a debate over noun cases in English. Some now contend that it does not have noun cases at all, others that it has two while still others maintain that there are three or four cases.
The difficulty is compounded if a linguist is not fluent in the language he is studying. The process of linguistic fieldwork is a painstaking one, fraught with pitfalls. Its mainstay is the use of "informants" who tell linguists, in interviews and on paper, about their language. Unfortunately, these informants tend to be better-educated than their fellows, and are often fluent in more than one language. [br] The author’s attitude towards Dr. Gil’s contentions is one of ______.
选项
A、disbelief.
B、deprecation.
C、corroboration.
D、ambiguity.
答案
C
解析
观点态度题。第四段第二句指出:Dr.Gil’s point about bias is well illustrated by the history of the study of the world’s most widely spoken tongue.接下来作者就此点展开论述,可见他支持Dr.Gil的观点,故[C]为答案。[B]意为“反对”,与文意不符,排除。
转载请注明原文地址:https://tihaiku.com/zcyy/3282577.html
相关试题推荐
______isthestudyofspeechsoundsinlanguageoralanguagewithreferenceto
Ahistoricalstudyoflanguageisastudyof______language.A、synchronicB、diac
Whatisnottheelementindefininglanguage?A、systemicB、arbitraryC、symbolD、v
Weallknowthatprogramminglanguageisthesystemofsyntax,grammar,and
Languageswillcontinuetodiverge.EvenifEnglishweretobecometheunive
Thechangesinlanguagewillcontinueforever,butnooneknowssure
Mandarin,orPutonghua,isthestandardservicesectorlanguageinourcount
CCELDisdistinctiveforits_____.A、cleargrammarcodesB、languagenotesC、usage
1 Itakeitthatthepurposeofanylanguagecourseistodevelopinlearnerst
1 Itakeitthatthepurposeofanylanguagecourseistodevelopinlearnerst
随机试题
Thechangesinlanguagewillcontinueforever,butnooneknowssurewhodoe
【S1】[br]【S7】B本空应填入从句的主语,故应选择名词。根据空格后的stories判断填入的名词应该与故事有关联,所以应填入[B]character(
Ifpolicymakershopetomakefasterprogressinimprovingeconomicperforman
某ICU护士实施个体化护理,每天上班护理一个患者,患者需要的全部护理由她全面负责
血钙过低可引起A.心率减慢B.心率加快C.骨骼肌兴奋性增强D.抽搐E.肾结石
口香糖--城市卫生()A.氟利昂--臭氧层 B.伐木--森林 C.捕猎--
培训管理工作的第一个环节是( )。A.培训需求分析 B.明确培训目标
列出用药过程中需定期检查血象的说明书项目是A.【禁忌】 B.【注意事项】 C
2020年12月,某酒厂(增值税一般纳税人)生产粮食白酒100吨全部对外销售,取
在Excel2003中,下列选项中的()可以实现将工作表页面的打印方向指定为横向
最新回复
(
0
)