Family Tree Model托福听力原文翻译及问题答案

Family Tree Model托福听力原文翻译及问题答案

一、Family Tree Model托福听力原文：

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…how 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托福听力中文翻译：

旁白：在语言学课上听一节课的一部分。

女教授：好吧，到目前为止，我们一直在研究语言学的一些核心领域，比如句法、音位学、语义学。嗯，这些都是我们可以通过一次看一种语言来研究的东西……在给定的语言中，声音、单词和句子是如何工作的。但历史语言学的分支涉及几种不同语言的比较，或一种语言不同阶段的比较。

现在，如果你在比较不同的语言，你会发现它们有很多共同点……也许它们有相似的发音，并且单词彼此对应，意思相同，发音相似。让我们用一个真实的例子。在十八世纪，研究过古代语言梵语、拉丁语和希腊语的学者注意到这三种语言有许多相似之处。也许有几个原因可以解释为什么这些语言有如此多的共同点。也许这是偶然发生的。。。也许一种语言受到另一种语言的借用影响很大，

或者，也许，也许这些语言是很久以前从同一种源语言发展而来的。也就是说，他们可能有基因上的联系。梵语、拉丁语和希腊语就是这样。这些语言有如此多的相似之处，因此得出的结论是，它们一定都来自同一个来源。还有，谈谈语言学的重要发现！这当然是其中之一。

学者们把这种源语言称为原始印欧语。原始印欧语系是一种重构的语言。这意味着语言学家得出的结论是，梵语、拉丁语和希腊语的母语应该是这样的。原始印欧语系扩展到其他语言，这些语言又演变成其他语言，因此最终，当今世界上使用的许多语言都可以追溯到一种语言，即几千年前使用的原始印欧语系。

现在，表达语言演变的一种方式……显示语言之间相互关联的方式……是使用族谱模型。就像你可以用来追溯祖先世代的族谱一样，只是它显示的是一个与基因相关的语言家族，而不是人类。语言家族的树模型从一种语言开始，我们称之为“母语”。例如，原始印欧语…

母语是此图顶部的一行。随着时间的推移，它分支为新的女儿语言……这些语言分支为自己的女儿语言……并且，具有相同来源、相同母亲的语言被称为姐妹语言；他们有很多共同的特点。这种情况一直持续下去……直到我们看到这样一棵巨大的倒立的语言树。这当然是不完整的，只是给你一个想法。基本上，这就是家谱模型。现在，树模型是一种表示语系发展和显示两种或两种以上语言之间密切关系的便捷方法。但它显然非常简单。用树上的一根树枝来表示一种完整的语言并不能真正公平地对待该语言中的所有变体。你知道，例如，在西班牙说的西班牙语和在墨西哥说的西班牙语不完全一样。

另一个问题是，语言的进化非常缓慢，但树模型使其看起来像是一夜之间进化的，就像有一个明显的时刻，一种母语完全分裂成了子语言。但在我看来，情况可能并非如此。

三、Family Tree Model托福听力问题：

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托福听力答案：

A1:正确答案：B

A2:正确答案：D

A3:正确答案：A

A4:正确答案：A

A5:正确答案：C

A6:正确答案：B

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