季佩英学术英语U10翻译.doc

An Instinct to Acquire an Art 1 As you are reading these words, you are taking part in one of the wonders of the natural world. For you and I belong to a species with a remarkable ability: we can shape events in each others brains with exquisite precision. I am not referring to telepathy or mind control or the other obsessions of fringe science; even in the depictions of believers these are blunt instruments compared to an ability that is uncontroversially present in every one of us. That ability is language. Simply by making noises with our mouths, we can reliably cause precise new combinations of ideas to arise in each others minds. The ability comes so naturally that we are apt to forget whata miracle it is. 当你读这句话,你是参加自然世界的奇迹之一。你和我属于一个物种的一种非凡的能力:我们彼此可以塑造事件用精致的精密的大脑。我不是指心灵感应或精神控制或者其他痴迷的边缘科学,即使在信徒的描述这些钝的工具的能力相比毫无争议出现在每一个人。这种能力是语言。仅仅靠发出噪声来与我们的嘴巴,我们可以可靠地导致精确的新组合的想法出现在彼此的想法。的能力是如此自然,我们容易忘记什么奇迹。 2 The recent illumination of linguistic abilities has revolutionary implications for our understanding of language and its role in human affairs, and for our view of humanity itself. Most educated people already have opinions about language. They know that it is mans most important cultural invention, the quintessential example of his capacity to use symbols, and a biologically unprecedented event irrevocably separating him from other animals. They know that language pervades thought, with different languages causing their speakers to construe reality in different ways. They know that children learn totalk from role models and caregivers. They know that grammatical sophistication used to be nurtured in the schools, but sagging educational standards and the debasements of popular culture have led to a frightening decline in the ability of the average person to construct a grammatical sentence. They also know that English is a zany, logic-defying tongue, in which one drives on a parkway and parks in a driveway, plays at a recital and recites at a play. They know that English