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  3. Some Things We Know About Language Many things about language are a mystery, and many will always remain so. But some things

Some Things We Know About Language Many things about language are a mystery, and many will always remain so. But some things

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问题                     Some Things We Know About Language
    Many things about language are a mystery, and many will always remain so. But some things we do know.
    First, we know that all human beings have a language of some sort. There is no race(种族)of men anywhere on earth so backward that it has no language, no set of speech sounds by which the people communicate with one another. Furthermore, in historical times, there has never been a race of men without a language.
    Second, there is no such thing as a primitive(原始的)language.There are many people whose cultures are undeveloped, who are, as we say, uncivilized, but the languages they speak are not primitive. In all known languages we can see complexities that must have been tens of thousands of years in developing.
    This has not always been well understood; indeed, the direct contrary has often been stated. Popular ideas of the language of the American Indians will illustrate. Many people have supposed that the Indians communicated in a very primitive system of noises. Study has proved this to be nonsense. There are, or were, hundreds of American Indian languages, and all of them turn out to be very complicated and very old. They are certainly different from the languages that most of us are familiar with, but they are no more primitive than English and Greek.
    A third thing we know about language is that all languages are perfectly adequate. That is, each one is a perfect means of expressing the culture of the people who speak the language.
    Finally, we know that language changes. It is natural and normal for language to change; the only languages which do not change are the dead ones. This is easy to understand if we look backward in time. Change goes on in all aspects of language. Grammatical features change as do speech sounds, and changes in vocabulary are sometimes very extensive and may occur very rapidly. Vocabulary is the least stable part of any language.
Which of the following statements is INCORRECT?
选项 A、A language is a means of expressing a particular culture.
B、All languages can well express their respective cultures.
C、American Indian languages are as complex as English.
D、Some languages are better than others.
答案D
解析 由第五段可知，A、B两项表述正确。根据第四段最后一句可知，作者认为不同的语言没有发展水平上的差别，美国的印第安语和英语一样复杂，故C项表述正确，D项表述不正确。
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