2019年1月5日托福阅读真题+题目+答案：The Proto-Indo-European Language

2019年1月5日托福阅读真题+题目+答案：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 Indie 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.

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托福阅读真题The Proto-Indo-European Language题目：

1. According to paragraph 1, which of the following statements about Germanic languages and Celtic languages is true?

A Both groups of languages were at some time spoken almost everywhere across the entire region from India to Britain.

B Each started out being spoken only by a very small group of people that probably numbered no more than a few thousand.

C They resemble each other more than either resembles any other language group in the Indo-European family.

D They can both be traced back to the same ancestor language from which Indie and Iranian languages also descended.

2. 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."'?

A To make the point that the process described only works for certain Proto-Indo-European languages

B To emphasize that modern Indo-European languages are all very similar despite their apparent differences

C To explain how linguists are able to reconstruct the Proto-Indo-European language

D To challenge the reliability of what linguists claim to know about the original speakers of Proto-Indo-European

3. 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 Linguists study how individual words have changed in different Indo-European languages and how they all derived from an earlier Proto-Indo-European word.

B By studying how individual words have changed in different Indo-European languages, linguists can work out an earlier word from which all the derived forms descend.

C Linguists were able to establish that the word "father" in English is derived from the word "padre" in Spanish, which comes from the Proto-Indo-European form pater.

D By studying the apparent similarities of the words for "father" in different Indo-European languages, linguists realized that the original word from which the words derived was impossible to determine.

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