时间:2019-02-15 作者:英语课 分类:英语时差8,16


英语课

 People who think about language talk about how the sounds of words bear no relation to objects in the world. Indeed, this has been a leading assumption in much of modern literary criticism, philosophy, and even linguistics 1.   Not necessarily so, says Brent Berlin, an anthropologist 2 at the University of Georgia in Athens. Berlin suspected that there was more than an arbitrary connection between word sounds and the physical characteristics of objects being described, and he set up an experiment to test his hypothesis.


First, he examined the words for two animals, the tapir and the squirrel, in 19 South American Indian languages. He was searching for similarities in sound-pattern. In 14 of those languages, the tapir--which is a big, slow-moving beast--was given a name with the sound "aah," whereas the small, quick squirrel was given a name based on the sound "ee."Next, to see if these sound-meanings could be generalized, Berlin read the unfamiliar 3 words to a group of English speaking test subjects, asking them to guess which word meant "squirrel." He reasoned that if word and object are arbitrarily connected by language, the result should be random 4; sometimes right, sometimes wrong. In fact he found a greater-than-chance-level number of correct guesses.
And something else interesting showed up: when he used words from the five languages that didn't fit the original "aah"-"ee" pattern, the subjects' responses were indeed random--unless the "ee" sound happened to be present, in which case they tended to guess "squirrel."  

n.语言学
  • She plans to take a course in applied linguistics.她打算学习应用语言学课程。
  • Linguistics is a scientific study of the property of language.语言学是指对语言的性质所作的系统研究。
n.人类学家,人类学者
  • The lecturer is an anthropologist.这位讲师是人类学家。
  • The anthropologist unearthed the skull of an ancient human at the site.人类学家在这个遗址挖掘出那块古人类的颅骨。
adj.陌生的,不熟悉的
  • I am unfamiliar with the place and the people here.我在这儿人地生疏。
  • The man seemed unfamiliar to me.这人很面生。
adj.随机的;任意的;n.偶然的(或随便的)行动
  • The list is arranged in a random order.名单排列不分先后。
  • On random inspection the meat was found to be bad.经抽查,发现肉变质了。
学英语单词
5-methylindoli-propionic acid
allergic nodular angitis
alpha privativum
amargosa
american college testing(act)
bear evidence of
beteman-kelvin principle
biramous appendage
birmbank
blowoff
cable trunking
cancer suppressor gene
cardiomelanosis
chenars
Chugunayevo
CoffeeScript
comprehensive glass insurance
crack of doom
crocodylidaes
crystal tea
cutting content
days of turnover
dedder
deinsulated
digital telemetry system
disk memory
double currency
ease out of
echo return
Elmidone
ethans
facetiousnesses
factory contral
Fajans-Soddy law of radioactive displacement
fluid sphere gyro (fsg)
Frankenhauser's ganglia
gazella subgutturosas
genus leontopodiums
get one's banana peeled
goes around with
grandma
grub about
human approach
hyperphosphatasaemia
impact microphone
in-service inspection system
indicator unit
insulation to falls
integrated circuit connector
intrinsic derivative
izaak
Japanese blue gold
jarretts
Khvājeh Zā'i
knitted
langtree
lasallia asiae-orientalis
laser enrichment
left auxiliary
lindey
liquid-moderator reactor
longitudinal electromagnetic force
look oneself again
Miami model
micropyrenic
Mount Ayr
Nabcin
Nawnghwe
nitrile phenolic adhesive
noble opal
NRZ-M (non-return-to-zero mark)
paraphase converter
parasitids
partscores
peach pit
permanent record
RANZCP
remote-control panel
salaite (salite)
screw shaped
set the land
shadow blood
short-duration voltage test
singing hinnies
statue-like
stone fly
system property
testing gallery
thin and weak body
Todesfelde
tossahs
trienio
trigeminies
turn-coat
type permitted
urina sanguinis
vehicle flowrate
veni
vertical axis propeller
weft yarn
winning and opening
wrong-way alarm