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  3. Scientists for decades have clashed over whether evolution takes place gradually or is driven by short spurts of intense change

Scientists for decades have clashed over whether evolution takes place gradually or is driven by short spurts of intense change

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问题     Scientists for decades have clashed over whether evolution takes
place gradually or is driven by short spurts of intense change. In the
latest chapter in this debate, researchers report that it appears that
when new languages spin-off from older one, there is an initial in- 【M1】______
troductory burst of alterations to vocabulary. Then, the language 【M2】______
intends to settle and accumulate gradual changes over a long period
of time. The team believes this discrete evolutionary pattern occurs
when a social group tries to forge a separate identification. Study co- 【M3】______
author Mark Pagel says that the latest study grew out of an earlier
finding in which he and colleagues determined that about 20 percent
of genetic changes among species occur they first split 【M4】______
off, whereas the rest happens gradually. ""It was very natural 【M5】______
with us to wonder if a similar process of evolution happens in cultural 【M6】______
groups,"" Pagel says. ""We treat the words that the different languages use al
most identically so to the way we use genes: ... The more divergent two spe- 【M7】______
cies are, the less their genes have in common, just like the more divergent 【M8】______
two languages are, the less their words have in common."" The team focused
on three of the world’s major language families in its study: Bantu, Indo-
European and Austronesian. They constructed genealogical trees—similar to
those they had created previously in their 2006 species-related study—albeit
this time the trees traced existed languages back to their common roots; the 【M9】______
length of a ""branch"" indicates the extent of word replacement that took place 【M10】______
as each old language morphed into its current form.
【M9】
选项
答案existed — existing
解析 existing的意思是“现存的”，existed只是exist的过去式，不能作定语修饰名词。
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