萨皮尔一沃尔夫假说的形成 ——2004年英译汉及详解 The relation of language and mind has interested philosophers for many centuries.【F1】The Greeks assum

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问题 萨皮尔一沃尔夫假说的形成
——2004年英译汉及详解
The relation of language and mind has interested philosophers for many centuries.【F1】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.【F2】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.【F3】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. Na-tive American languages are indeed different, so much so in fact that Navajo could be used by the US 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.【F4】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.【F5】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 patterns 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.
【F2】

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答案我们之所以感激他们,是因为从此以后,这些语言中的一部分消失了,因为讲这些语言的人要么灭绝了,要么被同化了,因而丧失了自己的语言。

解析 本句考查的重点是:时间状语从句和原因状语从句。 本句主干为We are obliged to them…,because…为原因状语从句,里面嵌套了一个as引导的时间状语从句,修饰vanished;who spoke them作定语修饰peoples。①as引导时间状语从句意为“随着,当…的时候”,翻译时候根据汉语表达习惯应置于谓语前,即as…,some of these languages have sincevanished。②因为本句中有原因状语从句,因此增译“之所以”,构成“之所以…,是因为…”的表达。
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