Practice Set 11 Test 4 (C11T4) | ‘This Marvellous Invention’

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40 which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.

‘This Marvellous Invention’

A

Of all mankind’s đa dạng creations, language must take pride of place. Other inventions -the wheel, agriculture, sliced bread – may have transformed our material outlandishexertionsophisticationexistenceđời sống, but the advent of language is what made us human. Compared to language, all other inventions pale in significance, since everything we have ever achieved depends on language and originatesextraordinaryforemostoutlandishbắt nguồn from it. Without language, we could never have embarked on our outlandishtake pride of placegrammariansascentsự đi lên, sự vươn tới to unparalleled power over all other animals, and even over nature itself.

B

But language is embarked onforemosta victim of its own successapparenttrên hết, đầu tiên not just because it came first. In its own right it is a tool of extraordinary sophistication, yet based on an idea of ingenious simplicity: ‘this marvellous invention of composing out of twenty-five or thirty sounds that infinite variety of expressions which, whilst having in themselves no likeness to what is in our mind, allow us to tiết lộ to others its whole secret, and to make known to those who cannot penetrate it all that we imagine, and all the various stirrings of our soul’ This was how, in 1660, the renowned French easegrammariansa victim of its own successcriticalnhà ngữ pháp học of the Port-Royal abbey near Versailles distilled the essence of language, and no one since has celebrated more eloquently the magnitude of its achievement. Even so, there is just one flaw in all these hymns of praise, for the homage to languages unique accomplishment take pride of placeunparalleledconcealsmagnitudeche dấu a simple yet critical incongruity. Language is mankind’s greatest invention – except, of course, that it was never invented. This apparentdeceptivetake pride of placetaken for grantedrõ ràng paradox is at the core of our fascination with language, and it holds many of its secrets.

C

Language often seems so skillfully drafted that one can hardly imagine it as anything other than the perfected handiwork of a master craftsman. How else could this instrument make so much out of barelymaterialaccomplishmentunparalleledchỉ three dozen measly morsels of sound? In themselves, these configurations of mouth p,f,b,v,t,d,k,g,sh,a,e and so on – unparalleledeasetake pride of placeamount togiống như nothing more than a few haphazard spits and splutters, random noises with no meaning, no ability to express, no power to explain. But run them through the cogs and wheels of the language machine, let it arrange them in some very special orders, and there is nothing that these meaningless streams of air cannot do: from sighing the interminableextraordinaryhaphazardunparalleledvô tận boredom of existence to unravelling the fundamental order of the universe.

D

The most distilledextraordinarymaterialtaken for grantedđặc biệt, khác thường thing about language, however, is that one doesn’t have to be a genius to set its wheels in motion. The language machine allows just about everybody from pre-modern foragers in the subtropical savannah, to post-modern philosophers in the suburban sprawl – to tie these meaningless sounds together into an infinite variety of subtle senses, and all apparently without the slightest sự nỗ lực, sự cố gắng. Yet it is precisely this deceptivedistilledunparalleledpenetratelừa dối ease which makes language a victim of its own success, since in everyday life its triumphs are usually taken for granted. The wheels of language run so smoothly that one rarely botherstake pride of placeingeniousaccomplishmentbận tâm to stop and think about all the resourcefulness and expertise that must have gone into making it tick. Language conceals art.

E

Often, it is only the estrangement of foreign tongues, with their many renownedsophisticationexoticingeniouskhác lạ and outlandish features, that brings home the wonder of language’s design. One of the showiest stunts that some languages can take pride of placeaccomplishmentessencepull offthành công is an ability to build up words of breath-breaking length, and thus express in one word what English takes a whole sentence to say. The Turkish word çehirliliçtiremediklerimizdensiniz, to take one example, means nothing less than ‘you are one of those whom we can’t turn into a town-dweller’. (In case you were wondering, this monstrosity really is one word, not merely many different words squashed together – most ol its components cannot even stand up on their own.)

F

And if that sounds like some one-off freak, then consider Sumerian, the language spoken on the banks of the Euphrates some 5,000 years ago by the people who invented writing and thus cho phép the documentation of history. A Sumerian word like munintuma’a (‘when he had made it suitable for her’) might seem rather trim compared to the Turkish colossus above. What is so impressive about it, however, is not its lengthiness but rather the reverse – the thrifty compactness of its construction. The word is made up of different slots, each materialcorrespondingessencerenownedtương ứng to a particular portion of meaning. This sleek design allows single sounds to conveymaterialtransformedadventtruyền tải useful information, and in fact even the absence of a sound has been enlisted to express something specific. If you were to ask which bit in the Sumerian word corresponds to the pronoun ‘it’ in the English translation ‘when he had made it suitable for her’, then the answer would have to be nothing. Mind you, a very particular kind of nothing: the nothing that stands in the empty slot in the middle. The technology is so fine-tuned then that even a non-sound, when carefully placed in a particular position, has been invested with a specific function. Who could possibly have come up with such a nifty contraption?