首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
Language and Humanity Language is powerful and it can help us do or get things as we wish. Language as a born trait • Langua
Language and Humanity Language is powerful and it can help us do or get things as we wish. Language as a born trait • Langua
admin
2022-01-22
32
问题
Language and Humanity
Language is powerful and it can help us do or get things as we wish.
Language as a born trait
• Language has evolved only in【T1】________.
• Comparison between chimpanzees and human beings:
- Chimpanzees
- use of tools: once seen as a sign of【T2】_______
- inability to【T3】__________
- tendency to【T4】__________
- Human beings
- able to improve and build on【T5】__________
- able to【T6】____________ideas
Language and social learning
• Problem of social learning: 【T7】___________
- Cause:
- stealing others’ ideas by【T8】_______
- Solution:
-【T9】__________developed to share ideas
• Results
-【T10】_______made available to every individual
- language as social technology to enhance【T11】________
Language and the modern world
• Existence of many different languages has led to
- separation of cooperative groups
-【T12】___________
- knowledge protection
- slow flow of ideas and tendency toward【T13】___
• Globalization needs【T14】_______.
•【T15】________hinder cooperation.
Solution: one world with one language
【T14】
Language and Humanity
Good morning everyone! In today’s lecture we are going to discuss the relationship between language and humanity. As we all know, language is very powerful. It allows you to put a thought from your mind directly in someone else’s mind.
Language is like genes talking, getting things they want. And you just imagine the sense of wondering a baby when it first discovers that merely by uttering a sound, it can get objects to move across the room as if by magic, and maybe even into its mouth.
Now we need to explain how and why this remarkable trait, you know, human’s ability to do things with language, has evolved and why did this trait evolve only in our species. In order to get an answer to the question, we have to go to tool use in the chimpanzees.
Chimpanzees can use tools and we take that phenomenon as a sign of their intelligence. But if they really were intelligent, why would they crack open nuts with a rock? Why wouldn’t they just go to a shop and buy a bag of nuts that somebody else had already cracked open for them? Why not? I mean that’s what we do. The reason the chimpanzees don’t do that is that they lack what’s psychologists and anthropologists call "social learning." That is, they seem to lack the ability to learn from others by copying or imitating or simply watching. As a result, they can’t improve on others’ ideas, learn from others’ mistakes or even benefit from others’ wisdom. And so they just do the same thing over and over and over again. In fact, we could go away for a million years and come back and these chimpanzees would be doing the same thing with the same rocks to crack open the nuts.
Okay. So what this tells us is that contrary to the old saying "monkey see monkey do". The surprise really is that all of the other animals really cannot do that, at least not very much. But by comparison, we humans can learn. We can learn by watching other people and copying or imitating what they can do. We can then choose from among a range of options available—the best one. We can benefit from others’ ideas. We can build on their wisdom. And as a result, our ideas do accumulate and our technology progresses. And this accumulative cultural adaptation as anthropologists called is "accumulation of ideas". It’s responsible for everything around you in your bustling and teaming everyday life.
I mean the world has changed at all of our proportion to what we would recognize even one thousand or two thousand years ago. And all of this is because of accumulative cultural adaptation. For instance, the chairs you are sitting in today, the lights in this lecture hall, my microphone, the iPads and the smart phones that you carry around with you. All are a result of accumulative cultural adaptation.
But our acquisition of social learning would create an evolutionary dilemma. And the solution to the dilemma is fair to say would determine not only the future course of our psychology but the future course of the entire world. And most importantly for this, it will tell us why we have language. And the reason that dilemma arouse is it turns out that social learning is visual theft. What I mean is if I can learn by watching you, I can steal your best ideas and I can benefit from your efforts without having to put in the same time and energy that you did into developing them.
Social learning really is visual theft. And in any species that acquire it, it would encourage you to hide your best ideas lest somebody steal them from you. And so sometime around 200,000 years ago, our species confronted this crisis and we chose to develop the systems of communication that would allow us to share ideas and to cooperate amongst others.
Choosing this option would mean that a vastly greater fun of knowledge and wisdom would become available to anyone individual then would ever arise from within an individual family or an individual person on their own.
Well, language is the result. Language evolved to solve the crisis of visual theft. Language is a piece of social technology for enhancing the benefits of cooperation, for reaching agreements, for striking deals and for coordinating our activities. And you can see that in the developing society that was beginning to acquire language. Not having language would be like a bird without wings.
As I said at the beginning, language really is the voice of our genes. But as we spread out around the world, we developed thousands of different languages. Currently there are about seven or eight thousand different languages spoken on earth. And then another problem occurred, it seems that we use our language not just to cooperate but to draw rings around our cooperative groups and to establish identities, and perhaps to protect our knowledge and wisdom and skills from being stolen from the outside. And we know this, because when we study different language groups and associate them with their cultures, we see that different languages slow the flow of ideas between groups.
Okay. This tendency we have, the seemingly natural tendency we have, goes towards isolation, towards keeping everything to ourselves, while as our modern world is communicating with itself and with each other, more than it has at any time in its past. And that communication, that connectivity around the world, that globalization now raises a burden. Because these different languages impose a barrier, as we’ve just seen, to the transfer of goods and ideas and technologies and wisdom, and impose a barrier to cooperation.
What will be the solution? In a world in which we want to promote cooperation and exchange? And in a world that might be dependent more than ever before on cooperation to maintain and enhance our levels of prosperity? I think it might be inevitable that we have to confront the idea that our destiny is to be one world with one language. What do you think of this solution?
Okay. In today’s lecture I have presented to you how language shapes our humanity, what kind of dilemma social learning has created and the possible solutions to the dilemma. In our next lecture, I am going to talk about lingua franca and its functions.
选项
答案
communication connectivity
解析
推断题。讲座中提到全球化时代中语言不通造成许多合作上的障碍,可见全球化需要更多沟通,更多联系。根据讲座"More than it has at any time in its past. And that communication, that connectivity around the world, that globalization now raises a burden."可知此处答案为communication或connectivity。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/LdIK777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
(1)Askedwhatjobtheywouldtakeiftheycouldhaveany,peopleunleashtheirimaginationsanddreamofexoticplaces,powerful
Humanityusesalittlelessthanhalfthewateravailableworldwide.Yetoccurrencesofshortagesanddroughtsarecausingfami
(1)ItwassaidbySirGeorgeBernardShawthat"EnglandandAmericaaretwocountriesseparatedbythesamelanguage."Myfirst
“人们的生活越来越富裕,但却远不如以前那样快乐了”,这个现象似乎早已成为现代生活永恒的矛盾之一。一个可能的答案就潜藏在我们的心理因素中,即如何才能够满足。我们对于地位、财富的需求从来都不是孤立定位的,而是在与参照组——通常是那些我们自认为与其地位相当的人—
Duringtheearlyyearsofthiscentury,wheatwasseenastheverylifebloodofWesternCanadaPeopleoncitystreetswatchedt
A、Trackingontheonlinebanking.B、Trackingwithdebitcardsorcreditcards.C、Trackingthroughcheckingaccount.D、Trackingw
A、Recordeddeliveryissuitableforsendingvaluablethings.B、Recordeddeliveryisaservicewithextrasecurity.C、Thepacket
A、Inafewweeks.B、Rightaway.C、March31,2007.D、Notmentioned.B面试接近尾声时,男士问Chris若被录用什么时候可以开始工作,Chris说随时都可以工作。immediately,mor
A、Halfaday.B、Oneday.C、Threedays.D、Fourdays.B男士说可以花一天时间让大家沉浸在水上运动中,女士说不介意。因此选B项。
随机试题
A.I’llsayIdidB.WonderfulC.Yes,itwasD.That’sagoodideaE.You’dbetterbuysomefruitandsandwichesF.Whatkind
子宫内膜异位症最典型的症状是:
35岁妇女,G2P0,一次人流,一次宫外孕保守治疗,近2年未避孕未受孕,迫切怀孕,月经欠规律4~7天/30~40天,偶尔出现痛经,检查子宫后位正常大小,双附件轻度增厚无压痛。对该患者的辅助检查,下述哪项不必要
男性,45岁,2小时前无明显诱因黑便,随即感头昏,心悸,曾一度晕厥,体查:P124次/分,BP10/8kPa(75/60mmHg)腹平软,剑突下轻压痛,肠鸣音活跃,此时最首要的措施是
A.<6个月的婴儿无热性支气管肺炎应考虑B.年长儿发热、咳嗽,同时伴有其他器官受累,中毒症状不重,应考虑C.新生儿及婴幼儿多见,肺部体征出现早,中毒症状重,应考虑D.6个月以内婴儿多见,中毒症状不明显,胸片以气肿改变为主,应考虑E.6月~2
蓝天公司是永生公司在北京地区从事缝合器及缝合产品销售业务的经销商。2008年1月2日。永生公司与蓝天公司签订经销合同,合同附件中对蓝天公司的经销区域、经销指标以及蓝天公司不得低于永生公司规定的产品价格进行销售等作出了明确的规定。2008年7月1日,永生公司
保险金额是保险人承担赔付或给付保险金责任的()限额,也是投保人对保险标的实际投保金额。
请计算“计算机”的合计金额。
操作系统将CPU的时间资源划分成极短的时间片,轮流分配给各终端用户,使终端用户单独分享CPU的时间片,有独占计算机的感觉,这种操作系统称为()。
Whatisthewomanlookingfor?
最新回复
(
0
)