2. 外语
  3. For the most part, the thousands of languages in the world today fall into one of two categories: tonal or nontonal. Two lingui

For the most part, the thousands of languages in the world today fall into one of two categories: tonal or nontonal. Two lingui

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问题     For the most part, the thousands of languages in the world today fall into
one of two categories: tonal or nontonal. Two linguists believe they know
the genetic underpinnings for these differences. During a study of linguistic
and genetic data from 49 distinctive populations, the authors discovered a 【M1】______
struck correlation between two genes involved in brain development and 【M2】______
language tonality. Populations who speak nontonal languages have newer 【M3】______
versions of the genes, with mutations that began to appear roughly 37
thousand years before. ""You can consider this as the first of the many pos- 【M4】______
sible studies that we could do to try to find a genetic basis for language and
language typology and the different populations that speak a language,""
says Patrick Wong, the assistant professor at Northwestern University, who 【M5】______
was not involved in this study. In English, the pitch which a word is spoken 【M6】______
convey emotion but usually does not affect its meaning. But in many 【M7】______
languages tone changes the meaning of words. For instance, the Chinese
word huar said in a high pitch means flower, but in a dipping pitch meaning 【M8】______
picture. The new research ties this difference to those two genes. The exact 【M9】______
functions of both genes are still open to debate, so they are known to affect 【M10】______
brain size during embryonic development. They presumably have something
to do with brain structure, because there are mutations of the genes that lead
to microcephaly, a condition in which a person’s brain is much smaller than
the average size for his or her age.
【M4】
选项
答案before — ago
解析 当需要表示相对于此时此刻而言的“……时间以前”时，要用ago；如果含义是“过去或者将来某个时刻之前”或者“另一个事件之前”，那么就用before。
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