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  3. People have culture primarily because they can communicate with and understand symbols. Symbols allow people to develop complex

People have culture primarily because they can communicate with and understand symbols. Symbols allow people to develop complex

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问题    People have culture primarily because they can communicate with and understand symbols. Symbols allow people to develop complex thoughts and to exchange those thoughts with others. Language and other forms of symbolic communication, such as art, enable people to create, explain, and record new ideas and information.
   A symbol has either an indirect connection or no connection at all with the object, idea, feeling, or behavior to which it refers. For instance, most people in the United States find some meaning in the combination of the colors red, white, and blue. But those colors themselves have nothing to do with, for instance, the land that people call the United States, the concept of patriotism, or the U. S. national anthem, The Star Spangled Banner.
   To convey new ideas, people constantly invent new symbols, such as for mathematical formulas. In addition, people may use one symbol, such as a single word, to represent many different ideas, feelings, or values. Thus, symbols provide a flexible way for people to communicate even very complex thoughts with each other. For example, only through sym- bols can architects, engineers, and construction workers communicate the information necessary to construct a skyscraper or bridge.
   People have the capacity at birth to construct, understand, and communicate through symbols, primarily by using language. Research has shown, for example, that infants have a basic structure of language—a sort of universal grammar—built into their minds. Infants are thus predisposed to learn the languages spoken by the people around them.
   Language provides a means to store, process, and communicate amounts of information that vastly exceed the capabilities of nonhuman animals. For instance, chimpanzees, the closest genetic relatives of humans, use a few dozen calls and a variety of gestures to communicate in the wild. People have taught some chimps to communicate using American Sign Language and picture-based languages, and some have developed vocabularies of a few hundred words. But an unabridged English dictionary might contain more than half-a-million vocabulary entries. Chimpanzees have also not clearly demonstrated the ability to use grammar, which is crucial for communicating complex thoughts.
   In addition, the human vocal tract, unlike that of chimpanzees and other animals, can create and speak out clearly a wide enough variety of sounds to create millions of distinct words. In fact, each human language uses only a fraction of the sounds humans can make. The human brain also contains areas dedicated to the production and interpretation of speech, which other animals tack. Thus, humans are predisposed in many ways to use symbolic communication.
Why do symbols provide a flexible way for people to communicate even very complex thoughts with each other?
选项 A、Because they are easy to understand.
B、Because they are invented by mankind.
C、Because one symbol can stand for many different ideas, feelings, or values.
D、Because people have the capacity at birth to construct, understand, and communicate through symbols, primarily by using language.
答案C
解析 见第三段，一种标志能够反映很多内容，故选C。
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