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经济学人:诺姆乔姆斯基 世界最知名语言学家提出诡异理论(上)

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(1). Johnson
约翰逊
(2). Noam Chomsky
诺姆·乔姆斯基
(3). The theories of the world’s best-known linguist have become rather weird
世界最知名语言学家提出了更诡异的理论
(4). 1:FEW disciplines are so strongly associated with a single figure: Einstein in physics and Freud in psychology, perhaps.
2:But Noam Chomsky is the man who revolutionised linguistics.
3:Since he wrote “Syntactic Structures” in 1957, Mr Chomsky has argued that human language is fundamentally different from any other kind of communication, that a “linguist from Mars” would agree that all human languages are variations on a single language, and that children’s incredibly quick and successful learning (despite often messy and inattentive parental input) points to an innate language faculty in the brain.
4:These ideas are now widely accepted.
1:很少有学术领域能如此紧密地与某个人挂钩:就像爱因斯坦之于物理学、弗洛伊德之于心理学,而诺姆·乔姆斯基则彻底改革了语言学。
2:自从其著作《句法结构》于1957年问世以来,乔姆斯基一直认为人类的语言与其他任何交流方式有着本质的不同。
3:“来自火星的语言学家”可能会同意所有的人类语言最初都是由单一语言变种而来,而儿童之所以能够快速地学会一门语言(尽管有时候家长会无意教些乱七八糟的东西)则都归功于大脑中天生的语言机制。
4:这种观念已经被广泛接受了。
(5). 1:Over the past 60 years, Mr Chomsky has repeatedly stripped down his theory.
2:Some aspects of human language are shared with animals, and others are part of more general human thinking.
3:He has focused ever more narrowly on the features of language that he reckons are unique to humans.
1:在过去的60年中,乔姆斯基不断地在精简自己的理论。
2:人类语言的某些方面与动物类似,而其余的则来源于人类的思考。
3:他一直专注于研究人类语言中独一无二的特性,并于去年与计算机科学家罗伯特·贝里克合著了一本名为《为什么我们是唯一的》的书,书中解释了人类语言的进化历程。
(6). 1:Other biologists, linguists and psychologists have probed the same question and have reached little consensus.
2:But there is even less consensus around the world’s most eminent linguist’s idea: that a single genetic mutation created an ability called “Merge”, in a single human whom Mr Chomsky has called “Prometheus”, some time before the human exodus from Africa.
3:That mutation was so advantageous that it survived and thrived, producing today’s 7,000 languages from Albanian to Zulu.
4:But the vast differences among the world’s languages, Mr Chomsky argues, are mere differences in “externalisation”. The key is Merge.
1:虽然其他各路生物学家、语言学家和心理学家也一直在探寻这个问题,却并没有达成多少共识。
2:然而对于语言学中最著名的理论则分歧更大—在一个乔姆斯基称之为“普罗米修斯”的人中,一次单一的基因突变创造了“合并”的能力,而当时人类还没有迁徙出非洲。
3:该突变如此强大,在之后的岁月中存活并繁衍,创造出如今从阿尔巴尼亚语到祖鲁语的7000种人类语言。
4:而世界各种语言中存在的广泛差异,乔姆斯基认为这只不过是外在的区别,核心仍然是“合并”。
(7). 1:But what is it? Merge simply says that two mental objects can be merged into a bigger one, and mental operations can be performed on that as if it were a single one.
2:The can be merged with cat to give a noun phrase, which other grammar rules can operate on as if it were a bare noun like water.
3:So can the and hat.
4:Once there, you can further merge, making the cat in the hat.
1:但“合并”到底是什么?是两个精神客体互相融合成一个更大的,如果这是一个单一个体,就能产生各类心理活动。
2:”The”与”cat”合并就能组成一个名词短语,如果只有一个名词(例如”water”)从语法规则上来说也是可以的。
3:”The”与”hat”的组合也同理。
4:之后,你可以进一步合并更多的词”the cat in the hat”。
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