专八改错练习第五篇：

Tracing missing persons can take much patientdetective work. But a special kind of “private eye” cantrace the missing ancestors of whole peoples by
studying the clues buried by words. __1__
These philologists, such as the language detectives arecalled, have traced __2__
the word trail back from peoples in Europe, India,South Africa, the Americas,
and the Pacific islands in a tiny nameless, and forgotten tribe that roamed central__3__
Eurasia 5000 to 6000 years ago, before the dawn of writing history. __4__
Since a long time scholars have been puzzled over the striking __5__
difference of words in different languages. In Dutch, vader; in Latin, pater;in __6__
old Irish, athir; in Persian, pidar;in the Sanskrit of distant India, pitr.
These words all sounded likely and meant the same thing—“father” __7__
Where did it happen that widely separated peoples used such __8__
close related sound symbols? The problem baffled linguists for years. The more so__9__
because “father” was but one of a host of such coincidences. Towards the end
of the 18 century it dawned on scholars that perhaps all these words stemmed__10__
from some common language.

参考答案及解析(反白可见)：

1. 将by改为in
(be) buried in 意思为 “被…所掩盖,掩蔽于…”
2. 将such去掉
在这里as是连词,引导状语从句.
3. 将第一个and改为to (这个句子长,小心上当呀)
以便和前文的from构成搭配 “from…to…”,表示 “从……到……”.
4. 将writing改为written`
“有文字记载的历史”英语为 “written history”.
5. 将Since改为 For
因为since做介词, 表示 “自从……起” 之意时,后面一般不跟表示一段时间的名词.
6. 将difference改为similarity
从后面的例子我们可以看出,作者在这里讲述的是文字的惊人的相同之处,而不是不同之处.
7. 将likely改为alike
likely 意思为 “很可能的”,不做 “相同的,相似的”解.
8. 将where改为why
这里不是问地点而是问原因,从后面的because也可以看出.
9. 将close改为副词closely
因为形容词close不能修饰过去分词related.
10. 将18改为 18th.
The more so because “father” was but one of a host of such coincidences.
这句话的the more so because是什么意思呢, 以为人家出版社错了,不过看两本资料都这么写. 有谁看得懂么?还是说真的是出错了.
原来the more so because意思为: 更何况.