The relation of language and mind has interested philosophers for many centuries. (T1)The Greeks assumed that the structure of l

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问题     The relation of language and mind has interested philosophers for many centuries. (T1)The Greeks assumed that the structure of language had some connection with the process of thought, which took root in Europe long before people realized how diverse languages could be.
    Only recently did linguists begin the serious study of languages that were very different from their own. Two anthropologist-linguists, Franz Boas and Edward Sapir, were pioneers in describing many native languages of North and South America during the first half of the twentieth century. (T2)We are obliged to them because some of these languages have since vanished, as the peoples who spoke them died out or became assimilated and lost their native languages. Other linguists in the earlier part of this century, however, who were less eager to deal with bizarre data from "exotic" language, were not always so grateful. (T3)The newly described languages were often so strikingly different from the well-studied languages of Europe and Southeast Asia that some scholars even accused Boas and Sapir of fabricating their data. Native American languages are indeed different, so much so in fact that Navajo could be used by the U.S. military as a code during World War Ⅱ to send secret messages.
    Sapir’s pupil, Benjamin Lee Whorf, continued the study of American Indian languages. (T4)Being interested in the relationship of language and thought, Whorf developed the idea that the structure of language determines the structure of habitual thought in a society. He reasoned that because it is easier to formulate certain concepts and not others in a given language, the speakers of that language think along one track and not along another. (T5)Whorf came to believe in a sort of linguistic determinism which, in its strongest form, states that language imprisons the mind, and that the grammatical pat terns in a language can produce far-reaching consequences for the culture of a society. Later, this idea became to be known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, but this term is somewhat inappropriate. Although both Sapir and Whorf emphasized the diversity of languages, Sapir himself never explicitly supported the notion of linguistic determinism.

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答案希腊人认为,语言结构与思维过程之间存在着某种联系。这一观点在人们尚未认识到语言的千差万别以前就早已在欧洲扎下了根。

解析 成份转换,拆分,词类转换法。将assume译为"假设"不符合汉语习惯,应意译为"认为"。have connection with应为"与…有联系、关联"。Which引导的非限制性定语从句是翻译的难点,which指代的是前面整句话,因此应译作"这一观点"。diverse应理解为"不同的",意译为"语言的千差万别"。take root意为"扎根"。
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