2020年7月22日家庭版托福阅读真题+题目+答案：Language as a Historical Source

2020年7月22日家庭版托福阅读真题+题目+答案：Language as a Historical Source

Much of what can be said about some of the world’s greatest migrations – the migration of Indo-European peoples from central Asia into India and Western Europe, the movement of the Bantu peoples throughout southern Africa, the spread of the Polynesians across the Pacific – is based on historical linguistics, that is on the study of the vocabulary, structure, and spread of languages.

1. Which of the sentences below best expresses the essential information in the highlighted sentence in the passage? Incorrect choices change the meaning in important ways or leave out essential information.

A) Historical linguistics is the study of the migrations of peoples as well as the study of the vocabulary, structure, and spread of languages.

B) The study of the vocabulary, structure, and spread of languages has provided the basis for much of what is known about some of the greatest migrations of peoples.

C) The direction of migration of peoples in Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Pacific was discovered through research on the history of their languages.

D) Historical linguistics has shown that the migrations of Indo-European peoples, of the Bantu peoples, and of the Polynesians were among the world’s greatest migrations.

The study of language as a historical record is based on some fundamental ideas. Languages change over time. As they change they diverge from related languages. Languages with strong similarities in structure and vocabulary that cannot be explained by borrowing or contacts are considered to be part of the same family, and it is assumed that sometime in the past an original language (the protolanguage) was the parent of all the languages in that family. As groups of people separated, their language changed and diverged. Further separation resulted in further divergence, so that over time a large number of related languages could result from the original language. The proto-Indo European language as the parent of Sanskrit, Persian, and Latin, but Latin later split into French, Italian, Romanian, Portuguese, and other related languages. By looking at structural and vocabulary similarities, we can establish linguistic subgroups and their relationship to one another as well as to the parent language. The study of the 300 to 600 (experts disagree) Bantu languages spoken today by more than 400 million people across much of the African continent is a case in point. From the comparative study of their vocabulary, we can tell much about their original cultures, but how can language be used to chart their history?

2. The phrase “a case in point” in the passage is closest in meaning to

A) a good example

B) a well-known example

C) an unusual case

D) an important case

3. According to paragraph 2, which of the following is true about Portuguese and Persian?

A) They both split off from Sanskrit.

B) They share the same relationship to Romanian.

C) They share the same relationship to Latin.

D) They result from the same protolanguage.

4. The fact that “experts disagree” to a large extent about the number of Bantu languages spoken today suggests that it is difficult to determine

A) whether two languages are related to the same protolanguage

B) whether the language patterns of various Bantu peoples are similar enough to regard these groups as speaking the same language

C) which of the Bantu languages spoken today is the original parent language

D) which similarities in the structure and vocabulary of Bantu languages can be explained by borrowing or contacts

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