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  3. Partly due to a historical development marked by worldwide colonialism, urbanization, and globalization, in the course of this c

Partly due to a historical development marked by worldwide colonialism, urbanization, and globalization, in the course of this c

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问题     Partly due to a historical development marked by worldwide colonialism, urbanization, and globalization, in the course of this century humankind is likely to experience its most extreme cultural loss. As K. David Harrison notes in When Languages Die, "The last speakers of probably half of the world’s languages are alive today." Their children or grandchildren are pressured to speak only the dominant language of their community or country. Under one estimate, more than 50% of the 6,900 or so languages identified nowadays are expected to become extinct in a matter of a few decades.
    The precise criteria for what counts as a distinct language are controversial—especially those regarding closely related linguistic systems, which are often inaccurately referred to as dialects of the same language. The problem is complicated by the insufficiency of studies about the grammar of many of the world’s endangered languages. In addition, from a cognitive standpoint any two groups of individuals whose languages are mutually intelligible may in fact have distinct mental grammars.
    As a cognitive system, a language shows dynamic properties that cannot exist independently of its speakers. This is the sense in which the Anatolian languages and Dalmatian are extinct. Therefore, language preservation depends on the maintenance of the native-speaking human groups. Unfortunately, the most accelerated loss of distinct languages takes place where economic development is rapid, worsening the breakdown of minority communities that speak different languages. In this perspective, a language often begins to die long before the passing of the last speaker: New generations may start using it only for limited purposes, increasingly shifting to the community’s dominant language. In this process, knowledge of the dying language erodes both at the individual level and at the community level.
    Linguistic diversity itself may be the worst loss at stake, because it may be the most promising and precise source of evidence for the range of variation allowed in the organization of the human cognitive system. For instance, Harrison discusses many strategies for manipulating quantities across languages, often endangered ones. The rapid loss of linguistic diversity substantially hinders comparative investigation about the multiple ways in which a single cognitive domain can be organized.
    Linguists are well aware that their efforts alone cannot prevent this loss. Community involvement, especially with government support, has proven essential in slowing or even reversing language loss in different cases (e.g., Basque and Irish). Crucially, endangered languages must be acquired by new generations of speakers. Here the biological metaphor adopted by Harrison applies appropriately — documentation of dead languages is akin to a fossil record, providing only partial clues about complex cognitive systems.
We can infer from the metaphor in the last paragraph that
选项 A、dead languages are similar to fossils in biological sense.
B、documentation is not enough for us to understand dead languages.
C、fossil records give a complete picture of ancient lives.
D、dead languages can remain alive if they are documented properly.
答案B
解析 根据题干定位到第五段最后一句——“在这里，哈里森采用的生物学比喻非常实用……它只能提供一部分线索”。这里的意思是等语言死亡之后再对其进行存档，对于该语言的认知体系仅能提供一部分线索。故B项为正确答案。
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