新高级阅读前（双语）2（910）

PASSAGE TWO

Pronunciation of language

1.Human speech contains more than 2,000 different sounds, from the common “m” and “a” to the rare clicks of some southern African languages.

2.But why are certain sounds more common than others? A ground-breaking, five-year study shows that diet-related changes in human bite led to new speech sounds that are now found in half the world’s languages.

3.More than 30 years ago, the scholar Charles Hockett noted that speech sounds called labiodentals, such as “f” and “v”, were more common in the languages of societies that ate softer foods.

4.Now a team of researchers led by Damián Blasi at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, has found how and why this trend arose.

5.They discovered that the upper and lower front teeth of ancient human adults were aligned, making it hard to produce labiodentals, which are formed by touching the lower lip to the upper teeth.

6.Later, our jaws change to an overbite structure, making it easier to produce such sounds.

7.The team showed that this change in bite was connected with the development of agriculture in the Neolithic period. Food became easier to chew at this point.

8.The jawbone didn’t have to do as much work and so didn’t grow to be so large.

9.Analyses of a language database also confirmed that there was a global change in the sound of world languages after the Neolithic age, with the use of “f” and “v” increasing remarkably during the last few thousand years.

10.These sounds are still not found in the languages of many hunter-gatherer people today.

11.This research overturns the popular view that all human speech sounds were present when human beings evolved around 300,000 years ago. ”

12.The set of speech sounds we use has not necessarily remained stable since the appearance of human beings.

13.“But rather the huge variety of speech sounds that we find today is the product of a complex interplay of things like biological change and cultural evolution,” said Steven Moran, a member of the research team.

第二篇

语言的发音

1.人类语言包含2000多种不同的声音，从常见的“m”和“a”到一些南部非洲语言中罕见的咔哒声。

2.但为什么某些声音比其他声音更常见呢？一项历时5年的突破性研究表明，与饮食相关的人类咬合变化导致了世界上一半语言中出现的新语音。

3.30多年前，学者查尔斯·霍克特注意到，在吃较软的食物的社会的语言中，像“f”和“v”这样的唇音更为常见。

4.现在，瑞士苏黎世大学达米安·布拉西领导的一个研究小组已经发现了这种趋势是如何以及为什么会出现的。

5.他们发现，古代的成年人的上门牙和下门牙是排成一条直线的，这使得他们很难发出唇音，而唇音是通过下唇接触上牙齿形成的。

6. 后来，我们的下颚变成了覆咬合结构，使我们更容易发出这样的声音。

7.研究小组表明，这种咬合力的变化与新石器时代农业的发展有关。

8.这时，食物变得容易咀嚼了。颚骨不需要做那么多的工作，所以没有长得那么大。

9.对语言数据库的分析也证了新石器时代之后，世界语言的声音发生了全球性的变化，在过去的几千年里，“f”和“v”的使用显著增加。

10. 这些发音在今天许多游牧民族的语言中仍然找不到。

11.“这项研究推翻了一种流行的观点，即所有人类语音都是在大约30万年前人类进化时出现的。

12.自从人类出现以来，我们使用的语音集合并不一定保持稳定。

   13.相反，我们今天发现的各种各样的语音是生物变化和文化进化等因素复杂相互作用的产物，”研究小组成员史蒂文·莫兰说。