概括:内容选自老托福听力,是练习托福听力的绝佳材料。


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Broca

那群没良心的,表面衣着光鲜弘扬正义,私下烧杀抢掠坑们拐骗,建个城堡还拖欠工钱,害的人家落草为寇躲在矿井里不敢出来,他们反而天天叫人去日人家,我们老百姓挣点钱容易吗,好不容易打点金还要上缴苛捐杂税,物价猛涨掉怪的金不见涨,城堡猛盖却没有一个是自己的家,居然还有无耻的人用外挂,起着马就能打死人却没有人管,天理何在啊
You'll recall that in last week's class I talked about how the sounds made by most animals, though sometimes complex, are different from human language. Only in humans do these sounds represent objects and events. Keep in mind that most animals can only repeat their limited utterances over and over again, while humans can say things that have never been said before. Today I want to focus on human language and how it developed. I doubt you'll be surprised when I say that the evolution of language was slow and laborious. There's some reliable evidence that language began with early humans a million and a half years ago. Through the study of the size and shape of brain fossils, scientists have determined that early human brains, like modern brains, have a left hemisphere slightly larger than the right hemisphere. We know that in modern humans, the left hemisphere's the seat of language. We also know that early human brains had a well-developed frontal section, known as Broca's area, which coordinates the muscles of the mouth and throat. It's clear, then, that early humans had a speech apparatus. They could produce any sound that we can. What we don't know is whether early humans used what they had. Since scholars know virtually nothing about prehistoric speech patterns, all they can do is speculate about how language actually originated. Let me give you a brief summary of some of these theories.