The Proto-Indo-European Language
Scholars have known for several centuries that most of the languages spoken in a broad swath from Britain to India are derived from a single original language.These languages belong to what is called the Indo-European family and include Indic languages,Iranian languages,Slavic languages,Romance languages,Germanic languages,and Celtic languages.Today many of these languages seem to bear only the slightest resemblance to one another.Yet most linguists believe they all are descended from a single ancestor language spoken by a small group of people-probably a few thousand-living in a relatively small area.
A remarkable amount is known about the original speakers of what is called Proto-Indo-European.They raised cattle,kept dogs as pets, used bows and arrows in battle,and worshipped a male god associated with the sky.All this information comes from linguistic reconstructions of their language.If a number of Indo-European languages have words that derive from the same root word,linguists can conclude that Proto-Indo-European contained that word.What’s more,by studying how individual words have changed in different Indo-European languages,linguists can work out an earlier form from which all the derived forms descend-as they did with the word “father'”in English,“padre”in Spanish,and“pita”in Sanskrit,all of which come from the Proto-Indo-European form pater.
Yet for all that is known about the group that spoke Proto-Indo-European,linguists cannot agree on the two most basic facts about its existence:when and where these people lived. Proto-Indo-European contains many words for different kinds of trees,so they probably lived in or near wooded areas.They also had many names for birds and made clothes from wool.Unfortunately, these clues could point to almost anywhere in Asia or Europe.At the moment there are two leading hypotheses about the Proto-Indo-European homeland.One is that the language was spoken by a nomadic people who lived just north of the Black and Caspian Seas about 6,000 years ago.These people may well have been the first to domesticate the horse.As their descendants-or perhaps just their way of life-spread across Europe,so did their language.Over succeeding millennia,this language evolved into the Indo-European languages known today.
The second hypothesis advocates an earlier spread of these languages.According to this idea,the first farmers to spread out of the Middle East into western Asia and Europe,beginning about 9,000 years ago,spoke Proto-Indo-European.As the farmers mixed with the indigenous peoples of these areas,and as indigenous people learned how to farm,Indo-European languages replaced the earlier tongues.
Both hypotheses have their problems.Clear evidence for the domestication of the horse 6,000 years ago is hard to find.People were certainly eating horses,but they may not have been riding them until much later.Nor is there any evidence for widespread conquests within Europe and western Asia by mounted warriors,which is one popular idea about how Proto-Indo-European spread.At most,some Europeans and west Asians might have adopted some elements of steppe (grasslands in Central Asia)culture during the fourth and third millennia B.C.,but whether these changes involved language is unknown.
The possible spread of Indo-European languages by advancing waves of farmers also has problems.No evidence indicates that the early farmers spoke these languages.Indeed,judging by ancient place names in Turkey,they may well have spoken a non-Indo- European language.Similarly,Proto-Indo-European seems to have had words for copper,cart,and the domesticated horse,yet these things were unknown among the first farmers of Turkey.
Today the people of the world speak more than 5,000 languages, all of which arose through three basic mechanisms.The first is colonization,in which modern humans entering a new area introduce their language.The second is divergence,in which a language spoken by different groups changes over time.The third is language replacement,in which a group of people adopts a new language introduced or imposed by another group.These three processes have created the tantalizing patterns of linguistic structure that exist in the world today.Linguists know that many languages are related through descent from a progenitor such as Proto-Indo-European.But languages and the families to which they belong seem related on multiple levels,and many of the relationships are obscure.
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Scholars have known for several centuries that most of the languages spoken in a broad swath from Britain to India are derived from a single original language.These languages belong to what is called the Indo-European family and include Indic languages,Iranian languages,Slavic languages,Romance languages,Germanic languages,and Celtic languages.Today many of these languages seem to bear only the slightest resemblance to one another.Yet most linguists believe they all are descended from a single ancestor language spoken by a small group of people-probably a few thousand-living in a relatively small area.
According to paragraph 1,which of the following statements about Germanic languages and Celtic languages is true?
Factual Information Questions事实信息题
ABoth groups of languages were at some time spoken almost everywhere across the entire region from India to Britain.
BEach started out being spoken only by a very small group of people that probably numbered no more than a few thousand.
CThey resemble each other more than either resembles any other language group in the Indo-European family.
DThey can both be traced back to the same ancestor language from which Indic and Iranian languages also descended.
2
A remarkable amount is known about the original speakers of what is called Proto-Indo-European.They raised cattle,kept dogs as pets, used bows and arrows in battle,and worshipped a male god associated with the sky.All this information comes from linguistic reconstructions of their language.If a number of Indo-European languages have words that derive from the same root word,linguists can conclude that Proto-Indo-European contained that word.What’s more,by studying how individual words have changed in different Indo-European languages,linguists can work out an earlier form from which all the derived forms descend-as they did with the word “father'”in English,“padre”in Spanish,and“pita”in Sanskrit,all of which come from the Proto-Indo-European form pater.
What is the function of the sentence:“If a number of Indo-European languages have words that derive from the same root word,linguists can conclude that Proto-Indo-European contained that word.”?
Rhetorical Purpose Questions修辞目的题
ATo make the point that the process described only works for certain Proto-Indo-European languages
BTo emphasize that modern Indo-European languages are all very similar despite their apparent differences
CTo explain how linguists are able to reconstruct the Proto-Indo-European language
DTo challenge the reliability of what linguists claim to know about the original speakers of Proto-Indo-European
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Yet for all that is known about the group that spoke Proto-Indo-European,linguists cannot agree on the two most basic facts about its existence:when and where these people lived. Proto-Indo-European contains many words for different kinds of trees,so they probably lived in or near wooded areas.They also had many names for birds and made clothes from wool.Unfortunately, these clues could point to almost anywhere in Asia or Europe.At the moment there are two leading hypotheses about the Proto-Indo-European homeland.One is that the language was spoken by a nomadic people who lived just north of the Black and Caspian Seas about 6,000 years ago.These people may well have been the first to domesticate the horse.As their descendants-or perhaps just their way of life-spread across Europe,so did their language.Over succeeding millennia,this language evolved into the Indo-European languages known today.
The word“succeeding”in the passage is closest in meaning to
Vocabulary Questions词汇题
Alater
Bvarious
Ccombined
Dcertain
4
The second hypothesis advocates an earlier spread of these languages.According to this idea,the first farmers to spread out of the Middle East into western Asia and Europe,beginning about 9,000 years ago,spoke Proto-Indo-European.As the farmers mixed with the indigenous peoples of these areas,and as indigenous people learned how to farm,Indo-European languages replaced the earlier tongues.
The“second”hypothesis makes all of the following claims about the speakers of Proto-Indo-European EXCEPT:
Negative Factual Information Questions否定事实信息题
AThey came to Europe and western Asia from the Middle East.
BThey introduced native peoples in Europe to farming.
CThey changed the languages spoken by the native peoples.
DThey formed settlements at a distance from those of native peoples.
5
The second hypothesis advocates an earlier spread of these languages.According to this idea,the first farmers to spread out of the Middle East into western Asia and Europe,beginning about 9,000 years ago,spoke Proto-Indo-European.As the farmers mixed with the indigenous peoples of these areas,and as indigenous people learned how to farm,Indo-European languages replaced the earlier tongues.
The word“advocates”in the passage is closest in meaning to
Vocabulary Questions词汇题
Aargues for
Bconfirms
Cfocuses on
DReveals
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Both hypotheses have their problems.Clear evidence for the domestication of the horse 6,000 years ago is hard to find.People were certainly eating horses,but they may not have been riding them until much later.Nor is there any evidence for widespread conquests within Europe and western Asia by mounted warriors,which is one popular idea about how Proto-Indo-European spread.At most,some Europeans and west Asians might have adopted some elements of steppe (grasslands in Central Asia)culture during the fourth and third millennia B.C.,but whether these changes involved language is unknown.
Why does the author mention“evidence for widespread conquests within Europe and western Asia by mounted warriors”?
Rhetorical Purpose Questions修辞目的题
ATo support the hypothesis that nomadic people were responsible for the spread of Proto-Indo-European
BTo challenge one popular idea about how Proto-Indo-European spread
CTo emphasize the importance of horse domestication in the spread of Proto-Indo-European
DTo explain why evidence for the domestication of the horse 6,000 years ago has been so hard to find
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The possible spread of Indo-European languages by advancing waves of farmers also has problems.No evidence indicates that the early farmers spoke these languages.Indeed,judging by ancient place names in Turkey,they may well have spoken a non-Indo- European language.Similarly,Proto-Indo-European seems to have had words for copper,cart,and the domesticated horse,yet these things were unknown among the first farmers of Turkey.
According to paragraph 6,what is one problem with the hypothesis that Indo-European languages were spread by advancing waves of farmers from Turkey who spoke Proto-Indo-European?
Factual Information Questions事实信息题
AThe only indication that early farmers spoke Proto-Indo-European comes from ancient place names in Turkey.
BProto-Indo-European included words that were added to the language only after the first waves of farmers had already spread out of Turkey.
CProto-Indo-European seems to have included words for things that the early farmers of Turkey knew nothing about.
DThere is evidence that suggests that only very few farmers in Turkey spoke Proto-Indo-European.
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Today the people of the world speak more than 5,000 languages, all of which arose through three basic mechanisms.The first is colonization,in which modern humans entering a new area introduce their language.The second is divergence,in which a language spoken by different groups changes over time.The third is language replacement,in which a group of people adopts a new language introduced or imposed by another group.These three processes have created the tantalizing patterns of linguistic structure that exist in the world today.Linguists know that many languages are related through descent from a progenitor such as Proto-Indo-European.But languages and the families to which they belong seem related on multiple levels,and many of the relationships are obscure.
It can be inferred from paragraph 7 that the mechanism of divergence differs from the mechanism of colonization in that divergence
Inference Questions推理题
Afunctions much more quickly than colonization
Bdoes does not necessarily involve the movement of a human population
Cdoes not occur among human populations today
Dcan eventually produce languages that are completely unrelated to each other
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Yet for all that is known about the group that spoke Proto-Indo-European,linguists cannot agree on the two most basic facts about its existence:when and where these people lived. Proto-Indo-European contains many words for different kinds of trees,so they probably lived in or near wooded areas.They also had many names for birds and made clothes from wool.Unfortunately, these clues could point to almost anywhere in Asia or Europe.At the moment there are two leading hypotheses about the Proto-Indo-European homeland.One is that the language was spoken by a nomadic people who lived just north of the Black and Caspian Seas about 6,000 years ago. [■] These people may well have been the first to domesticate the horse. [■] As their descendants-or perhaps just their way of life-spread across Europe,so did their language. [■] Over succeeding millennia,this language evolved into the Indo-European languages known today. [■]
The second hypothesis advocates an earlier spread of these languages.According to this idea,the first farmers to spread out of the Middle East into western Asia and Europe,beginning about 9,000 years ago,spoke Proto-Indo-European.As the farmers mixed with the indigenous peoples of these areas,and as indigenous people learned how to farm,Indo-European languages replaced the earlier tongues.
Look at the four squares [■] that indicate where the following sentence could be added to the passage
This would explain the means by which they were able to move around easily.Insert Text Questions句子插入题
Where would the sentence best fit？Click on a square sentence to the passage.
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Most languages spoken from Britain to India are derived from Proto-Indo-European-a language originally spoken by a very small group of people.
Prose Summary Questions概要小结题
Select 3 answers
AIf many Indo-European languages have words derived from the same root word,Proto-Indo-European likely contained that word,which tells us about the original speakers of that language.
BUnfortunately,clues about the Proto-Indo-European homeland that can be gained from linguistic reconstructions indicate only that it was somewhere in Europe between 6,000 and 9,000 years ago.
CAll theories about the origins of Proto-Indo-European have their drawbacks,but we know that today’s 5,000 plus languages arose through a mixture of colonization,divergence,and replacement.
DOne view is that the Proto-Indo-European speakers were nomads living north of the Black Sea 6,000 years ago,but others think they were farmers who spread from the Middle East 9,000 years ago.
ELinguists who believe that Proto-Indo-European spread by conquests by mounted warriors reject the idea that farmers who lacked both horses and copper introduced their language to others.
FToday many languages seem unrelated to each other,in part because there are now a wide variety of different mechanisms by which languages develop.
