题目内容
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听力原文：Professor: Good morning! I am James Munro, and this is Linguistics 10l. Our topic
Communication can fail even when two people have the same native language. You see, in addition to their usual agreed-upon meanings, words and concepts have very personal meanings for each person based on memories and experiences. Does that make sense to you？
Student: I think so. Is it like when I hear the word "dog," I might think of the little beagle named Surge that I had when I was a kid, but my friend, who is afraid of dogs, might think of Cujo？ You know, the huge dog that attacked people in that old Steven King Movie？
Professor: That's right! Exactly! Here's another example: A rose may be just a beautiful object to me, but it may remind you of a lovely summer in England or a romantic birthday present. So you can see the problem, right？
Student: Sure. Right. Uh-huh.
Professor: Also, there are between 3,000 and 6,000 public languages in the world and we must add approximately 5 billion private languages since each of us necessarily has one. Did you get that？ With this many languages, it's amazing that we understand each other at all.
However, sometimes we do communicate successfully. We do learn to speak other languages. But learning to speak a language seems to be a very mysterious process. Now this brings us back to the first question on our list: Where does language come from？ And how does it develop？
For a long time, people thought that we learned language only by imitation and association. For example, a baby touches a hot pot and starts to cry. The mother says, "Hot, hot!" and the baby—when it stops crying—imitates the mother and says, "Hot, hot." The baby then associates the word "hot" with the burning feeling. However, Noam Chomsky, a famous linguist, said that although children do learn some words by imitation and association, they also combine words to make sentences in ways they have never heard before. Chomsky suggested that this accomplishment is possible because human babies have an innate ability to learn any language in the world. Are you following me？
Student: (Hesitating) Maybe.
Professor: Chomsky says that children are born with the ability to learn language, but this does not explain how children begin to use language in different ways. For example, as children develop their language skills, they quickly learn that language is used for more than stating facts such as "The girl is tall." They learn to make requests, to give commands, to agree, to disagree, to explain, to excuse, and even to lie. The uses of language seem endless. This is the positive side of the paradox. Did you get that？
Students: (Hesitating) Maybe. Not exactly. I'm not sure.
Professor: In other words, language is a wonderful way of communicating our ideas to other people. The negative side of the paradox is that not all people speak the same language, and therefore we cannot understand each other.
So we're back to where we started. Can we ever really learn to speak someone else's language？
For now, let's assume that we can learn to speak someone else's language, not just a few polite phrases, but really learn to speak it fluently. We know that we will be able to communicate with other people who speak that language. But something else happens as well. I think that learning another language can transform. us as individuals—it can change our worldview and even our personalities. For example, if we speak French fluently, we
A．Because even when people hear the word "dog", they may have different associations.
B．Because we may communicate with each other through language, but sometimes we do not understand someone else' s words and symbols.
C．Because words and concepts have personal meanings based on each user's memories and experiences.
D．Because while languages help people understand each other, different languages also present difficulties.
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