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
Which of the following is NOT the characteristic of a "language hotspot"?
Which of the following is NOT the characteristic of a "language hotspot"?
admin
2013-04-23
19
问题
Which of the following is NOT the characteristic of a "language hotspot"?
M: By some estimates, half of the world’s 7,000 languages will disappear in the next century. K. Linda Harrison, a linguist at Swarthmore College, has made a career documenting some of them and advocating for keeping them alive. Welcome to our talk, Ms. Harrison. So, what is a "language hotspot", and what are the characteristics of the typical hotspot?
W: "Language hotspot" is a term I coined in 2006, inspired by the biodiversity hotspots model. Languages are unevenly distributed around the globe, both geographically and demographically, and they face uneven threats. The hotspots model helps us to visualize and track this global trend, and to prioritize resources. (1) A language hotspot is a contiguous region which has, first of all, a very high level of language diversity. Secondly, it has high levels of language endangerment. Thirdly, it has relatively low levels of scientific documentation, like recordings, dictionaries, grammars, etc. We’ve identified two dozen hotspots to date, in places such as Oklahoma, Paraguay, India, Papua New Guinea and Siberia. With a scientific team from National Geographic, we are visiting the hotspots to take the pulse of some of the world’s most endangered languages. The hotspots model allows us to visualize the complex global distribution of language diversity, to focus research on areas of greatest urgency, and also to predict where we might encounter languages not yet known to science. This was recently borne out by our documentation of Koro, a small language in India that is new to science.
M: (2) What do we lose when we lose a language?
W: The human knowledge base is eroding as we lose languages, worsened by the fact that most of them have never been written down or recorded. In "When Languages Die", I wrote "When we lose a language, we lose centuries of human thinking about time, seasons, sea creatures, reindeer, edible flowers, mathematics, landscapes, myths, music, the unknown and the everyday" Only some cultures erect grandly built monuments by which we can remember their achievements. But all cultures encode their genius in their languages, stories, and lexicons. Each language is a unique expression of human creativity. We find millennia of careful observation of the natural world and human behavior, knowledge of flora and fauna, often not yet known or identified by scientists, and some of the secrets of how to live sustainably in challenging environments like the Arctic. (3) We would be outraged if Notre Dame Cathedral or the Great Pyramid of Giza were demolished to make way for modern buildings. We should be similarly appalled when languages — monuments to human genius far more ancient and complex than anything we have built with our hands — erode.
M: Talking about language and local ecology, you say losing one entails losing the other. If most things are translatable, is it possible to keep the knowledge but not the language?
W: It’s possible, but not likely, and it’s not the usual case we see everywhere from the Arctic to Amazonia. (4) In native cultures we observe the decline of languages and life ways occurring in parallel. There’s an astonishing book called Watching Ice and Weather Our Way. In it, the Yupik elders describe, define and draw sketches of 99 distinct types of sea ice formations which their language gives specific names to. Their climate science amazes us with its precision, predictive power, and depth of observation. Modern climate scientists have much to learn from it. As the Arctic ice melts, and new technologies like snowmobiles advance, Yupik ice-watching becomes the passion of the elderly few. Their knowledge of ice, their words for it, and the hunting skills and life ways are all receding together with the Yupik language itself.
M: Many of the peoples you describe are, from our point of view, desperately poor. "Development" tends to fold them into the bigger, and richer society, but kills their languages. How can the tradeoff be resolved?
W: No one, no matter how poor, becomes richer by abandoning one language to learn another, and in fact I suggest they become poorer from it. People of all ages, especially children, can easily be bilingual. New research shows that bilingualism strengthens the brain, by building up what psychologists call the cognitive reserve. In addition, heritage-language retention provides access to the cultural knowledge base and support a stronger ethnic identity and cultural pride. It is a pernicious and false message of globalization that language choice is subtractive, that is, you must abandon your heritage language to speak only a dominant tongue. Around the globe, we see minority speech communities, from Aymara to Zapotec, Aka to Mowhawk, pushing back against this ideology. (5) They are making a strategic decision to keep their languages, while becoming bilingual in a global tongue. We can all contribute to making the world safe for linguistic diversity. It requires a shift in attitudes. If we can learn to value the intellectual diversity that is fostered by linguistic variety, we can all help to ensure its survival. No one knows where the next brilliant idea will emerge; no culture has a monopoly on human genius.
M: All right. It’s so nice talking with you. Thanks a lot for sharing with us your insights into the human language.
W: My pleasure indeed.
选项
A、To show that it is not likely to keep the knowledge but not the language.
B、To show that there are 99 distinct types of sea ice formations.
C、To show that modern climate scientists have little to learn from it.
D、To show that it is likely to keep the knowledge but not the language.
答案
A
解析
理解题。主持人问既然可以翻译,有没有可能保存知识而不保留语言,这位语言学家答道: “It’s possible,but not likely”,为了表明可能性不大,他举了Watching Ice and Weather Our Way一书,书中记录了99种不同的海冰形成,用了特别的当地语言作为名称。随着语言的消失,这些相关的知识也将消失,所以选A,知识和语言不太可能分割。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/RF4O777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
Agreatnumberofattentionisbeingpaidtodaytotheso-calleddigitaldivide—1.______thedivisionoftheworldintothein
AbranchoftheNationalAcademyofSciencesreportedWednesdaythatfederalsafetyregulatorslackoftheexpertisetomonitor
Intoday’sworld,insuranceplaysavaluableroleintheeconomicand1.______socialwelfareoftheentirepopulation.Thewish
Itisnotoftenthatbiologistshaveachancetowatchnaturalselectioninaction.Thebest-knowncases—theevolutionofresist
Peoplebetweentheagesof______and70(65inScotland)whosenamesappearontheelectoralregister,withcertainexceptions,a
IntheUnitedStates,educationalpoliciesaredeterminedby______.
WhichofthefollowingisNOTthebestcomedybyOscarWilde?
WhichofthefollowingisNOTapoemwrittenbyRobertLeeFrost?
Apieceofnewsthata12-year-oldboywhohasneverreceivedanyschooleducationhasbeenadmittedbyafirst-classuniversity
WhatisNOTmentionedaspartofthepreparationthatneedstobemadebeforemarriage?
随机试题
下述生化反应中,哪个是不正确的
来源于樟科植物的药材是()。
建筑安装工程中,周转使用材料的摊销费用应计入( )费。
甲烟草公司提供烟叶委托乙公司加工一批烟丝。甲公司将已收回烟丝中的一部分用于生产卷烟,另一部分烟丝卖给丙公司。在这项委托加工烟丝业务中,消费税由()代收代缴。
企业定员的范围包括()。
党的十九届四中全会提出,社会治理是国家治理的重要方面,必须加强和创新社会治理,建设社会治理共同体。下列对社会治理共同体表述正确的是()。
注意事项1.申论考试是对应考者阅读理解能力、综合分析能力、提出和解决问题能力、文字表达能力的测试。2.作答参考时限:阅读材料40分钟。作答110分钟。3.仔细阅读给定材料,按照后面提出的“作答要求"依次作答。4.请在
一公司销售部有4名区域销售经理,每人负责的区域数相同,每个区域都正好有两名销售经理负责,而任意两名销售经理负责的区域只有1个相同。问这4名销售经理总共负责多少个区域的业务?
下列关于宏的叙述中,错误的是()。
BothXiaoLiandPeter______inthesameuniversity.
最新回复
(
0
)