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  3. The relation of language and mind has interested philosophers for many centuries. 61) The Greeks assumed that the structure of l

The relation of language and mind has interested philosophers for many centuries. 61) The Greeks assumed that the structure of l

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问题      The relation of language and mind has interested philosophers for many centuries. 61) The Greeks assumed that the structure of language had some connection with the process of thought, which took root in Europe long before people realized how diverse languages could be.
     Only recently did linguists begin the serious study of languages that were very different from their own. Two anthropologist-linguists, Franz Boas Edward Sapir, were pioneers in describing many native languages of North and South America during the first half of the twentieth century. 62) We are obliged to them because some of them languages have since vanished, as the peoples who spoke them died out or became assimilated and lost their native languages. Other linguists in the earlier part of this century, however, who were less eager to deal with bizarre data from "exotic" language, were not always so grateful. 63) The newly described languages were often so strikingly different from the well studied languages of Europe and Southeast Asia that some scholars even accused Boas and Sapir of fabricating their data. Native American languages are indeed different, so much so in fact that Navajo could be used by the US military as a code during World War II to send secret messages.
     Sapir’s pupil, Benjamin Lee Whorf, continued the study of American Indian languages. 64) Being interested in the relationship of language and thought, Whorl developed the idea that the structure of language determines the structure of habitual thought in a society. He reasoned that because it is easier to formulate certain concepts and not others in a given language, the speakers of that language think along one track and not along another. 65) Whorf came to believe in a sort of linguistic determinism which  in its strongest form, states that language imprisons the mind, and that the grammatical patterns in a language can produce far-reaching consequences for the culture of a society. Later, this idea became to be known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, but this term is somewhat inappropriate. Although both Sapir and Whorf emphasized the diversity of languages, Sapir himself never explicitly supported the notion of linguistic determinism.
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答案我们之所以感激他们(两位先驱)，是因为自此以后，这些土著语言中有一些已经不复存在了，这是由于说这些语言的部族或是消亡了，或是被同化而丧失了自己的本族语言。
解析 此句的结构并不难掌握，主要是准确表达其中的下面几个措辞：be obliged to“感激某人”；have since vanished“从那以后就消失了，不复存在了”；此处的since表示“从此以后”之意；die out“灭绝，完全的灭亡(cease living completely；become extinct)”；不宜译作“死亡，消失”。
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