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
Our Greatest Possession Man is called in Greek the Zoon phonanta which means the【1】______. What 【1】______ makes humanity diff
Our Greatest Possession Man is called in Greek the Zoon phonanta which means the【1】______. What 【1】______ makes humanity diff
admin
2011-02-11
0
问题
Our Greatest Possession
Man is called in Greek the Zoon phonanta which means the【1】______. What 【1】______
makes humanity different from the rest of the animal world is its capacity for【2】______ 【2】______
a system of sound signals. Human beings tend to use speech not for conveying messages
or expressing feelings but merely for establishing and sustaining【3】______ 【3】______
The【4】______of language is essentially a part of the modernization of language. 【4】______
Modern English is grammatically much simpler than its ancestor Anglo-Saxon, and Italian
and Spanish are much simpler than their mother【5】______ 【5】______
All of us say things we never said before, and without much【6】______effort; we 【6】______
are always inventing new things to say. That is file great human talent, which is based on
a very simple peculiarity of the human brain--its capacity to think in【7】______. Man 【7】______
is able to separate specific sounds and oppose one to another.
Although we are quite【8】______of the origins of human language, we know that 【8】______
when language first appeared, it was already fully【9】______. The system of symbols 【9】______
of the outside world was the【10】______to the creation of inside worlds. Language is (10)_____
our greatest possession.
【3】
Man is called in Greek the Zoon phonanta or talking animal. What makes humanity different from the rest of the animal world is its capacity for constructing a system of sound signals. You will say at once that certain birds talk and some of them talk very well. Chimpanzees can be taught a number of words and a few simple grammatical structures. But only human beings are able to invent whole languages, not merely parts of them or handle a few nouns and verbs. When an animal began to talk, that animal called itself man.
Speech certainly came before the discovery of fire. We still tend to use speech not for conveying messages or expressing feelings but merely for establishing and sustaining human contact.
The act of speaking serves primarily the end of sociability. It does not have to mean anything but it has to be continuous. At dinner parties a prolonged silence is the most embarrassing thing in the world: it seems to indicate that sociality has failed. It is often broken by more than one person’s speaking at the same time--excuse me--sorry--after you--no, after you--and what is said is far less important than the fact of somebody having said something, anything. Everybody breathes a sigh of relief, especially the hostess.
We have no means of knowing what the language of, say, Stone Age man was like, but we know something of that ancient language known as Indo-European because its structure and some of its vocabulary, much changed, survive in the daughter language, which means most of the languages of Europe. It seems to have been a complex language, with a rich grammar, not at all like Malay or Chinese, and it is fairly certain that the further back we go in our study of language the greater complexities we find.
The simplification of language is essential]y a part of the modernization of language: modern English is grammatically much simpler than its ancestor Anglo-Saxon, and Italian and Spanish are much simpler than their mother Latin. It is wrong to think of the first talkers taking a few linguistic bricks, joining them together, then baking more bricks and adding them to make a more and more imposing structure. An original babble was associated with a particular feeling or thought, but it was only in the period after, say, the break-up of the Roman Empire that grammarians began to analyzes the parts of this babble and come up with terms like noun, verb, adjective, adverb.
All of us say things we never said before, and without much conscious effort; we are always inventing new things to say. That is the great human talent. This talent is based, however, on a very simple peculiarity of the human brain--its capacity to think in opposed structures.
Look at it this way: the spectrum has many colours in it, and one is merged into another. Man learned to pick out colours as separable items. He did more; he learned how to make them into signs of opposed meaning. You have only to think of a traffic signal to see that this is so. Now out of the babble of noise which the human vocal system is capable of producing it is possible to separate specific sounds and oppose one to the other. Pick does not mean the same as pig, because/k/is opposed to/g/, though those two sounds only differ (in English, anyway)in that one is breathed and the other sung. This structuralist gift of the human brain enables us to talk of tiny structures that oppose each other in doing separate jobs and, taken together, add up to a language.
We are, it has to be confessed, almost totally ignorant of the origins of human language, but we do know that it was the evolutionary breakthrough which produced the species we call man. And when language first appeared it was already fully grown. The system of symbols of the outside world which includes our own bodies was the key to the creation of inside worlds--sciences and technologies. Language is our greatest possession. We would be wise to think about its mysteries and cherish the miracle that language is. But we will never be able to understand it.
选项
答案
human contact/human communication
解析
考察对重要细节的理解。语言的功能不仅在于传达信息、表达感情,同时也是建立和保持人际交流的重要途径。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/ZaeO777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
Eliot’sinterestedinpoetryinabout1902withthediscoveryofRomantic.HehadrecalledhowhewasinitiatedintopoetrybyE
WhyDoWeNotLiveForever?Thehumanbodyiscomposednotofperishablematerialslikewoodormetal,butoflivingcellst
WhyDoWeNotLiveForever?Thehumanbodyiscomposednotofperishablematerialslikewoodormetal,butoflivingcellst
EveryyearmorethanhalfamillionAmericankidshavedrainagetubessurgicallyimplantedintheirearstocombatpersistentin
ItisnothingnewthatEnglishuseisontherisearoundtheworld,especiallyinbusinesscircles.ThisalsohappensinFrance,
Theivory-billedwoodpecker,ifyouhaven’theard,isnolongerextinct.Inlatespring,agroupof17researchersannouncedin
HomerHomer:oneofthegreatest【1】_______poets.【1】_______famousfortwoepicpoems:relatedwith【
RealpolicemenhardlyrecognizeanyresemblancebetweentheirlivesandwhattheyseeonTV.Therearesimilarities,ofcourse,
RealpolicemenhardlyrecognizeanyresemblancebetweentheirlivesandwhattheyseeonTV.Therearesimilarities,ofcourse,
AmongthegreatMiddleEnglishpoets,GeoffreyChaucerisknownforhisproductionof______.
随机试题
外存和内存有许多不同之处,外存相对于内存来说,以下叙述不正确的是()
下列哪项与原核生物DNA复制错误率低的原因有关
结核性脑膜炎脑脊液的典型改变是
根据《中华人民共和国城镇国有土地使用权出让和转让暂行条例》规定,教育、科技用地土地使用权出让的最高年限为()。
不同形式的室外消火栓根据环境和安装场合,适用范围不同。以下关于消火栓系统和消火栓选择的说法,不正确的是()。
某老师未经学生允许私自将学生的作文编人自己编著的优秀作文集,对该老师的做法叙述正确的是()
我们在课堂上通过语言传授可以学习各种课本知识和日常生活常识,并能在以后的生活中加以运用。这种对知识的记忆是()
软件设计过程中应该遵循()等基本原理。
“海上丝绸之路”是古代中国与外国交通贸易和文化交往的海上通道,包括东海航线和南海航线。以下城市不属于“海上丝绸之路”航线中主要港口的是()。
HelpWantedAdOutstandingopportunitywithlocalrealestatecorporation.Requiresstrongbackgroundinrealestate,financ
最新回复
(
0
)