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  3. One of the liveliest debates in linguistics is over whether all languages share fundamental properties. If so, perhaps language

One of the liveliest debates in linguistics is over whether all languages share fundamental properties. If so, perhaps language

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问题     One of the liveliest debates in linguistics is over whether all languages share fundamental properties. If so, perhaps language is a universal feature of evolution. To find out, scholars have looked to other universal features, and one in particular: no society on Earth lacks music. The comparison illuminates what is special about both.
    Music and language seem intimately linked, but how? Did language start with song, as Darwin believed or is music "auditory cheesecake" that developed from language and other useful faculties, as Steven Pinker, a Harvard psychologist, has said? Is music itself a language, as Stevie Wonder sang? Might the two be fundamentally the same?
    Some similarities are obvious. Both can utilize the unique human vocal tract. Both have a kind of beat. Both can express emotion. Both can be either carefully composed or spontaneously improvised. And both are highly social. Although the origin of music is unclear, it seems likely to have involved celebration, communal worship or martial inspiration and co-ordination.
    At a structural level the parallels are striking, too. With a finite set of notes or words, and a finite set of rules, an inexhaustible variety of novel melodies or sentences can be created. This "discrete infinity" is often said to be the feature of human language. Animal communication, by contrast, is only able to convey a limited number of thoughts (the location of a source of food, for example, or the presence of a predator).
    Aniruddh Patel of Thufts University has argued that music and language, rather than being essentially the same, rely on the same bit of the brain. In an experiment he presented his subjects with a sentence that contained a grammatical trick ("The scientist confirmed the hypothesis was being studied in his lab"), revealing one word at a time. The subjects were to press a button for each word at their own pace. Many paused at the unexpected "was". "The scientist confirmed the hypothesis" seemed a complete sentence.
    They also heard music as they performed this exercise. Some were treated to a new chord in a pleasing progression with every word that was revealed. Others heard a jarring chord at the moment they reached the trick word "was". Both groups slowed down—but those given the inharmonious notes did so much more. Mr Patel hypothesises that this is because sentence structure, and the structure of the harmony, draw on shared, limited resources in the brain.
Which of the following would be the best title for the text?
选项 A、No Society on Earth Lacks Music
B、The Different Regions of the Brain
C、The Infinity of the Language
D、The Parallels of Music and Language
答案 D
解析 本文主要讨论了语言与音乐之间的共性。从内容与功能方面来看，两者都能利用人的声音表达情感，具有社交性。从结构的角度来讲，一套有限的规则就可以创造出无穷无尽的新旋律或句子。塔夫茨大学的阿尼鲁德·帕特尔认为，音乐和语言的本质并不相同，相同的是依赖于大脑的同一片区域，并用实验予以证明。因此，选项[D]“语言与音乐之间的共性”概括了全文主旨，为正确答案。
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