Family Tree Model托福聽力原文翻譯及問題答案

Family Tree Model托福聽力原文翻譯及問題答案

一、Family Tree Model托福聽力原文：

Narrator:Listen to part of a lecture in a linguistics class.

Female Professor:All right,so far we’ve been looking at some of the core areas of linguistics,like syntax,phonology,semantics.Um,and these are things that we can study by looking at one language at a time…h(huán)ow sounds,and words and sentences work in a given language.But the branch of historical linguistics involves the comparison of several different languages,or the comparison of different stages of a single language.

Now,if you’re comparing different languages and you notice that they have a lot in common…Maybe they have similar sounds,and words that correspond to one another—that have the same meaning—and that sound similar.Let’s use a real-world example.In the eighteenth century,scholars who had studied the ancient languages Sanskrit,Latin,and Greek,noticed that these three languages had many similarities.And there might be several reasons why languages,such as these,had so much in common.Maybe it happened by chance...maybe one language was heavily influenced by,um,borrowed words from the other,

or maybe,maybe the languages developed from the same source language,long ago.That is,maybe they’re genetically related.That was what happened with Sanskrit,Latin,and Greek.These languages had so many similarities that it was concluded that they must have all come from the same source.And,talk about important discoveries in linguistics!This was certainly one of them.

The scholars referred to that source language as Proto-Indo-European.Proto-Indo-European is a reconstructed language.Meaning it’s what linguists concluded a parent language of Sanskrit,Latin,and Greek would have to be like.And Proto-Indo-European branched out into other languages,which evolved into others,so in the end,many languages spoken all over the world today can trace their ancestry back to one language,Proto-Indo-European,which was spoken several thousand years ago.

Now,one way of representing the evolution of languages…showing the way languages are related to each other…is with the family tree model.Like a family tree that you might use to trace back through generations of ancestors,only it’s showing a family of genetically related languages instead of people.A tree model for a language family starts with one language,which we call a“mother”language.For example,Proto-Indo-European…

The mother language is the line on the top of this diagram.Over time,it branches off into new daughter languages…which branch into daughter languages of their own…And,languages that have the same source,the same mother,are called sisters;they share lots of characteristics.And this went on…until we’re looking at a big,upside-down tree of languages like this.It’s incomplete,of course—just to give you an idea.So,that’s the family tree model,basically.Now,the tree model is a convenient way of representing the development of a language family and of showing how closely related two or more languages are.But it’s obviously very simplified.Having a whole language represented by just one branch on the tree doesn’t really do justice to all the variation within that language.Y’know,Spanish that’s spoken in Spain isn’t exactly the same as the Spanish that’s spoken in Mexico,for example.

Another issue is that languages evolve very gradually,but the tree model makes it look like they evolve overnight,like there was a distinct moment in time when a mother language cleanly broke off into daughter languages.But it seems to me it probably wasn’t quite like that.

二、Family Tree Model托福聽力中文翻譯：

旁白：在語言學課上聽一節(jié)課的一部分。

女教授：好吧，到目前為止，我們一直在研究語言學的一些核心領域，比如句法、音位學、語義學。嗯，這些都是我們可以通過一次看一種語言來研究的東西……在給定的語言中，聲音、單詞和句子是如何工作的。但歷史語言學的分支涉及幾種不同語言的比較，或一種語言不同階段的比較。

現(xiàn)在，如果你在比較不同的語言，你會發(fā)現(xiàn)它們有很多共同點……也許它們有相似的發(fā)音，并且單詞彼此對應，意思相同，發(fā)音相似。讓我們用一個真實的例子。在十八世紀，研究過古代語言梵語、拉丁語和希臘語的學者注意到這三種語言有許多相似之處。也許有幾個原因可以解釋為什么這些語言有如此多的共同點。也許這是偶然發(fā)生的。。。也許一種語言受到另一種語言的借用影響很大，

或者，也許，也許這些語言是很久以前從同一種源語言發(fā)展而來的。也就是說，他們可能有基因上的聯(lián)系。梵語、拉丁語和希臘語就是這樣。這些語言有如此多的相似之處，因此得出的結論是，它們一定都來自同一個來源。還有，談談語言學的重要發(fā)現(xiàn)！這當然是其中之一。

學者們把這種源語言稱為原始印歐語。原始印歐語系是一種重構的語言。這意味著語言學家得出的結論是，梵語、拉丁語和希臘語的母語應該是這樣的。原始印歐語系擴展到其他語言，這些語言又演變成其他語言，因此最終，當今世界上使用的許多語言都可以追溯到一種語言，即幾千年前使用的原始印歐語系。

現(xiàn)在，表達語言演變的一種方式……顯示語言之間相互關聯(lián)的方式……是使用族譜模型。就像你可以用來追溯祖先世代的族譜一樣，只是它顯示的是一個與基因相關的語言家族，而不是人類。語言家族的樹模型從一種語言開始，我們稱之為“母語”。例如，原始印歐語…

母語是此圖頂部的一行。隨著時間的推移，它分支為新的女兒語言……這些語言分支為自己的女兒語言……并且，具有相同來源、相同母親的語言被稱為姐妹語言；他們有很多共同的特點。這種情況一直持續(xù)下去……直到我們看到這樣一棵巨大的倒立的語言樹。這當然是不完整的，只是給你一個想法。基本上，這就是家譜模型?，F(xiàn)在，樹模型是一種表示語系發(fā)展和顯示兩種或兩種以上語言之間密切關系的便捷方法。但它顯然非常簡單。用樹上的一根樹枝來表示一種完整的語言并不能真正公平地對待該語言中的所有變體。你知道，例如，在西班牙說的西班牙語和在墨西哥說的西班牙語不完全一樣。

另一個問題是，語言的進化非常緩慢，但樹模型使其看起來像是一夜之間進化的，就像有一個明顯的時刻，一種母語完全分裂成了子語言。但在我看來，情況可能并非如此。

三、Family Tree Model托福聽力問題：

Q1:1.What does the professor mainly discuss?

A.Same characteristics that are common in several languages

B.A way to represent languages that are genetically related

C.Which languages probably evolved from Proto-Indo-European

D.Linguists'opinions about why languages change over time

Q2:2.What point does the professor make when she says that some languages have similar-sounding words?

A.Most languages with similar-sounding words seem related but are not.

B.Eighteenth-century scholars reached an inaccurate conclusion about ancient languages.

C.There is limited information available about how ancient languages sounded.

D.There is more than one possible explanation for similarities among languages.

Q3:3.What does the professor say was an important discovery in linguistics?

A.Sanskrit,Greek,and Latin had the same parent language.

B.Sanskrit,Greek,and Latin borrowed words from each other.

C.Proto-Indo-European was not a real language.

D.Most languages have several sister languages.

Q4:4.Based on the discussion,what information can be shown on a tree model?

A.That several languages share a common ancestor

B.Whether a language is in the process of dying out

C.When a certain language came into existence

D.Why sister languages exist in the same geographical area

Q5:5.Why does the professor mention variation within a language?

A.To reinforce a point she made about Proto-Indo-European

B.To explain the original purpose of the tree model

C.To point out information that the tree model does not show

D.To explain why tree models have become overly complicated

Q6:6.What can be inferred about the professor when she says this.

A.She is not sure what causes languages to change.

B.She does not think that languages change quickly.

C.She thinks a fact she just mentioned about language might be hard to believe.

D.She thinks languages evolved differently in the past than they do now.

四、Family Tree Model托福聽力答案：

A1:正確答案：B

A2:正確答案：D

A3:正確答案：A

A4:正確答案：A

A5:正確答案：C

A6:正確答案：B

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