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
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
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
admin
2010-07-19
62
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.
It can be inferred from the third paragraph that ______.
选项
A、linguists tend to choose a better way to explain unfamiliar languages.
B、Riau Indonesian belongs to the Indo-European language family.
C、Riau Indonesian might not fit into an existing mould.
D、Dr. Gil’s argument has been criticized by other linguists.
答案
C
解析
推断题。由题干直接定位至第三段。第二句解释首句中提到的bias的原因:That is because it is easier for linguists to discover extra features in foreign languages than to realize....这里提到的是easier,不是better,排除[A]。倒数第二句指出:虽然语言学家们出发点很好,但是却有将不同语言套进一个模式的倾向。从末句中的since most linguists are westerners,that mould is usually an Indo-European language from the West可以看出,既然Dr.Gil认为这是bias,显然Indo-European language的语言模式不适用于Riau Indonesian,[B]不符合文意,[C]是作者言外之意,故为答案。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/NulO777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
______isthestudyofspeechsoundsinlanguageoralanguagewithreferencetotheirdistributionandpatterningandtotacit
Ahistoricalstudyoflanguageisastudyof______language.
WhichofthefollowingstatementsaboutintellectualpropertyisNOTtrue?Accordingtothepassage,studiesontheresultsof
Languagechangeis
Fromthefirstparagraph,wegettheimpressionthatAccordingtothepassage,thetwodaughtersseemto
TherewereanumberofcarvedstonefiguresplacedatintervalsalongtheparapetsoftheoldCathedral;someofthemrepresente
Specialwordsusedintechnicaldiscussion______.Inrecentyears,therehasbeenamarkedincreaseinthenumberoftechnical
Whatisthemasonofthedeclineofthenumberofthewildhorses?
Anumberoffactorsrelatedtothevoicerevealthepersonalityofthespeaker.Thefirstisthebroadareaofcommunication,
Anumberoffactorsrelatedtothevoicerevealthepersonalityofthespeaker.Thefirstisthebroadareaofcommunication,
随机试题
麦角新碱不用于催产和引产的原因是
某女,婚后2年,漏服避孕药3天后停经50天,妊娠试验阳性,阴道流血血1周,略少于月经量,伴有腹痛,应选择哪项措施为最佳
现代城乡规划体系的核心是()。
在检查表中可用不同符号表示产生质量的主要原因,一般而言,“⌒”表示________。
赤岭村是革命老区村,位于清水湾与土福湾之间,全村占地面积408亩,人口2016人。这片区域,原来污水横流、垃圾遍地,人还没走到附近,臭味已经远远的熏过来了。自县里开展整治专项行动以来,该村在整治环境工作上一方面依靠政府投入建立了垃圾站和垃圾转运车,另一方面
爱因斯坦:相对论
结合材料回答问题材料12015年10月5日,跨太平洋伙伴关系协定(TPP)12个谈判国在美国佐治亚州亚特兰大举行的部长会议上达成基本协议,同意进行自由贸易,并在投资及知识产权等广泛领域统一规范。规模占全球四成的巨大经济圈将应运而生。据彭博社报道,美国总
如果要将系统的默认路径设置为“D:\database”,则正确的命令是()。
若有定义:floatx=1.5;inta=1,b=3,c=2;则正确的switch语句是()。
dining本题询问该房屋的特色。录音原文中指出该房屋是一所三卧室的大房子(athree-bedroomedhouse),有一个餐厅(adiningroom),独立的起居室(aseparatelivingroom)和一个厨房(akitche
最新回复
(
0
)