英汉对照文章阅读.docVIP

1. Is language，like food，a basic human need without which a child at a critical period of life can be starved and damaged？Judging from the drastic experiment of Frederick II in the thirteenth century it may be. Hoping to discover what language a child would speak if he heard no mother tongue he told the nurses to keep silent.?? 语言是否像食物一样为人类的一项基本需求，在生命的关键时刻，没有它孩子就会饿死或者受到损害呢？从十三世纪弗雷德里克二世所做的严厉的试验来判断，这是可能的。为了发现一个从没听到过母语的孩子究竟会讲什么语言，他叫保姆缄默不语。??? All the infants died before the first year. But clearly there was more than language deprivation here. What was missing was good mothering. Without good mothering， in the first year of life especially， the capacity to survive is seriously affected.?? 所有婴儿出生一年不到都夭折了。但是很明显，夭折的原因不是被剥夺了语言，而是失去母亲般的悉心照护。没有母亲般的悉心照护，特别是在生命的第一年，婴儿的成活能力受到严重影响。??? Today no such drastic deprivation exists as that ordered by Frederick. Nevertheless， some children are still backward in speaking. Most often the reason for this is that the mother is insensitive to the cues and signals of the infant， whose brain is programmed to mop up language rapidly. There are critical times， it seems， when children learn more readily. If these sensitive periods are neglected， the ideal time for acquiring skills passes and they might never be learned so easily again. A bird learns to sing and to fly rapidly at the right time， but the process is slow and hard once the critical stage has passed.?? 在今天，像弗雷德里克下令严厉剥夺的现象已不复存在了。尽管如此，有些孩子说话仍然迟钝。究其原因，往往是母亲对婴儿的示意和信号无动于衷，而孩子的大脑这时正处在快速吸收语言的状态。看起来，确有某些关键时期，孩子们学起来相当容易。假如这段敏感的时期被忽视，获得技巧的理想时间过去了，他们可能就再也不会如此轻松地学到东西了。一只小鸟能在适当时机较快地学会鸣叫和飞翔，可是一旦关键阶段过去，学会鸣叫和—飞翔的过程就会缓慢而艰难。??? Linguists suggest that speech milestones are reached in a fixed sequence and at a constant age， but there are cases where speech has started late in a child who eventually turns out to be of high IQ （Intelligence Quotient）。 At twelve weeks a baby smiles and utters vowel-like sounds； at twelve months he can speak simple words and understand simple commands； at eighteen mont