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  3. In English, the word for the sniffing appendage on our face is nose. Japanese also happens to use the consonant n in this word (

In English, the word for the sniffing appendage on our face is nose. Japanese also happens to use the consonant n in this word (

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问题     In English, the word for the sniffing appendage on our face is nose. Japanese also happens to use the consonant n in this word (hand) and so does Turkish (burun). Since the 1900s, linguists have argued that these associations between speech sounds and meanings are purely arbitrary. Yet a new study calls this into question.
    Together with his colleagues, Damian Blasi of the University of Zurich analyzed lists of words from 4,298 different languages. In doing so, they discovered that unrelated languages often use the same sounds to refer to the same meaning.【B11】____________________
    The idea is not new. Previous studies have suggested that sound-meaning associations may not be entirely arbitrary, but these studies were limited by small sample sizes and highly restricted lists of words.【B12】_______________
    The method of the study involved two key parts. The first step was to estimate how frequently the word for a given concept uses a particular sound by assigning binary values of 0 or 1 to associations in individual languages.【B13】_______________Aggregating these numbers across the thousands of languages studied yields the overall probability that any word for red in any language will contain r—in this case, 0.35.
    【B14】_____________
    So how do we know that the association between red and r is special? To address this question, the authors performed a second step, this time calculating the probability that any randomly selected word uses r. By comparing the two probabilities, they were able to show that across languages, r is more than twice as likely to occur in words for red than in other words. With this method, the researchers reported 74 robust associations between word sounds and meanings, including I and leaf, and n and nose.
    The study raises some big-picture questions. Why, for example, should it be the case that culturally and geographically diverse groups of humans link the same sounds with the same meanings?
    【B15】____________________
    So the answer to this question remains elusive. Although it’s easy to imagine that the n-sound in nose reflects nasality, this is a guess and no such relationship can explain other associations.
    Another tough question concerns the relatively small number of associations. Why do a handful of words like red, small and leaf form non-arbitrary links to their speech sounds, while thousands of other words—such as soup and dog—do not? Simon Kirby, professor at the Center for Language Evolution at the University of Edinburgh, thinks this may be the heart of the matter. "The puzzle is really why this is such a marginal phenomenon," says Kirby.
    [A]   Blasi and colleagues used statistical analyses to rule out the possibility that people happened to borrow words like red from neighboring languages, or that such words descended from the same ancient protolanguage.
    [B]  For example in English, the word for red uses the consonant r and therefore is scored a 1, while in Japanese, oka does not contain r and therefore receives a 0.
    [C]  Blasi and colleagues have shown that non-arbitrary associations are possible—the deeper puzzle about language is why it is nevertheless largely arbitrary.
    [D]   For example, the consonant r is often used in words for red—think of French rouge, Spanish rojo, and German rot, but also Turkish krmz, Hungarian piros, and Maori kura.
    [E]  On its own, however, this calculation is not enough. There are thousands of words that use r—road, mural, and waiter, to name only a few English examples.
    [F]  Different from them, Blasi’s study—published this month in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA—is notable because it included almost two thirds of the world’s languages and used lists of diverse words, including pronouns, body parts, verbs, natural phenomena, and adjectives— such as we, tongue, drink, star and small, respectively.
    [G]   One limitation of the study is the relatively small number of meanings that were included in the analysis, points out Eric Holman, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles.
【B12】
选项
答案F
解析 空格前提及早期的研究也有类似的发现，并指出这些研究的不足之处：样本太少、词量有限。空格后是第四段，讲布拉西的研究采用的方法步骤。从第二、第四段来看，布拉西的研究一直是论述的重点；第四段开头提到的the study即指布拉西的研究．可见第三段空格处应该是与该研究有关的内容．且讲述的可能是不同于早期研究的一些情况．以作对比。既然空格前指出了早期研究的不足．那么空格处可能是讲布拉西的研究的相对优点。F指出布拉西研究具有语言涵盖范围广、词汇种类繁丰的有点，符合上面分析的逻辑关系，且F开头的them在空格前也能找到所指，即Previous studies。故F为本题答案。
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