大學(xué)英語四級(jí)聽力美文第41篇:Is There a Backward Language

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　　英語四級(jí)聽力美文第41篇:Is There a Backward Language

　　Culture is the sum total of all the traditions, customs, beliefs, and ways of life of a given groupof human beings.In this sense, every group has a culture, however savage, underdeveloped, oruncivilized it may seem to us.To the professional anthropologist, there is no intrinsicsuperiority of one culture over another,just as to the professional linguist there is nointrinsic rank among languages. People once thought of the languages of backward groups assavage, underdeveloped forms of speech, consisting largely of grunts and groans.

　　While it is possible that language in general began as a series of grunts and groans, it is a fact established, by the study of “backward” languages that no spoken tongue answersthat description today.Most languages of uncivilized groups are, by our most severestandards, extremely complex, delicate, and ingenious pieces of machinery for thetransfer of ideas.

　　They fall behind our Western languages not in their sound patterns or grammatical structures, which usually are fully adequate for all language needs, but only in their vocabularies, whichreflect the objects and activities known to their speakers.

　　Even in this department, however, two things are to be noted:

　　1. All languages seem to possess the machinery for vocabulary expansion either by puttingtogether words already in existence or by borrowing them from other languages and adaptingthem to their own system.

　　2. The objects and activities requiring names and distinctions in “backward” languages, whiledifferent from ours, are often surprisingly numerous and complicated. A Western language isdistinguishes merely between two degrees of remoteness (“this” and “that”); some languagesof the American Indians distinguish between what is close to the speaker, or to the personaddressed, or removed from both, or out of sight, or in the past, or in the future. This study oflanguage, in turn, casts a new light upon the claim of the anthropologists that all cultures areto be viewed independently, and without ideas of rank.