这是读报的第四篇文章。这个系列主要是想要把看到的一两篇好文章做一个简单的分享，可能是对一个热门事件的后续讨论、一个我自己没有看过想过的小观点，或者是一个实用的表达方式。
这几个月《经济学人》的主流声音聊来聊去都绕不开新冠疫情引发的种种，粗略看看不觉得什么，精读下来就非常审美疲劳。所以这一篇选了个相对比较冷门的文章：浅谈语言和音乐的异同。Johnson是“书籍与艺术”版块里一个非常有品质的小专栏，专门讨论与语言相关的主题。它聊过譬如少数语种、人工智能翻译、学习外语等等雅思托福经常涉及的话题，尤其是对语言学感兴趣的小伙伴们可以常去翻翻。
这篇文章有两种颜色标注，对应不同的知识点解析。开始 —
原文：One of the liveliest debates in linguistics is over whether all languages share fundamental properties. If so, perhaps language is a universal feature of evolution. To find out, scholars have looked to other universal features, and one in particular: no society on Earth lacks music. The comparison illuminates what is special about both.
Music and language seem intimately linked, but how? Did language start with song, as Darwin believed? Or is music “auditory cheesecake” that developed from language and other useful faculties, as Steven Pinker, a Harvard psychologist, has said? Is music itself a language, as Stevie Wonder intoned? Might the two be fundamentally the same?
从有了人类文明开始，隔了千山万水的地球上的各个族群慢慢发展出自己的语言和文字，它们貌似完全不同但又有着内核接近的用途和发展路径。和语言一样扎根在不同文明里扮演着类似功能的另一个主体是，音乐。
文章一开始把它俩摆在一起，开始聊鸡生蛋蛋生鸡的问题。《诗经》不是也大量收录了各地民歌、王府奏乐和祭祀乐歌嘛~ 那么从头算起，是为了记录音乐才诞生了语言，还是语言的出现成全了音乐依附于它得以滋长传播呢？
一个句式：“关于X最激烈的辩论之一是X”
- 原文：One of the liveliest debates in linguistics is over whether all languages share fundamental properties.
- 翻译：语言学上最活跃的辩论之一是，是否所有语言的基本属性是共通的。
议论文需要就某个话题展开辩论时，如何摆脱“一些人认为X，另一些人认为X” 这种划水句型呢？上面这个句子里就可以提炼出一个好用的框架：One of the liveliest debates in A is over whether B. 如果你不确定A如何提炼也可以把in A两个单词删除，注意B通常是一个完整的句子。例如：
One of the liveliest debates (in university education) is over whether theoretical subjects should be replaced by practical ones.
一个小词：Lack
它是一个非常好用的小词，但是很多同学分不清什么时候它需要和of连用。简单说就是lack当动词用时常作及物动词，直接接宾语就好，不需要加of；而lack当名词用时，常用one’s lack of/a lack of这样的搭配。比较两个句子：
- There can be lots of barriers, whether it's a lack of budget, poor infrastructure, lack of support and training, or a lack of confidence.
- No society on Earth lacks music.
原文：Some similarities are obvious. Both can utilise the unique human vocal tract. Both have a kind of beat. Both can express emotion. Both can be either carefully composed or spontaneously improvised. And both are highly social. Although the origin of music is unclear, it seems likely to have involved celebration, communal worship or martial inspiration and co-ordination. At a structural level the parallels are striking, too. With a finite set of notes or words, and a finite set of rules, an inexhaustible variety of novel melodies or sentences can be created. This “discrete infinity” is often said to be the hallmark of human language. Animal communication, by contrast, is only able to convey a limited number of thoughts (the location of a source of food, for example, or the presence of a predator).
Aniruddh Patel of Tufts University has argued that music and language, rather than being essentially the same, rely on the same bit of the brain. In an experiment he presented his subjects with a sentence that contained a grammatical trick (“The scientist confirmed the hypothesis was being studied in his lab”), revealing one word at a time. The subjects were to press a button for each word at their own pace. Many paused at the unexpected “was”. “The scientist confirmed the hypothesis” seemed a complete sentence.They also heard music as they performed this exercise. Some were treated to a new chord in a pleasing progression with every word that was revealed. Others heard a jarring chord at the moment they reached the trick word “was”. Both groups slowed down—but those given the discordant notes did so much more. Mr Patel hypothesises that this is because sentence structure, and the structure of the harmony, draw on shared, limited resources in the brain.
文章的第二部分谈及了语言与音乐的几个明显的共性：发声部位--声道；创作方式--化简为繁；目的--情感表达。至于为什么它们有诸多相似之处，文中提出了一种猜想：神经学家Patel博士做的实验表明，语言和音乐调动了大脑相同的部位及功能。文章篇幅受限，对这组实验以及后续的研究没有挖掘太深，对这个领域的知识感兴趣的小伙伴可以看看这一本👇
一个小词：Pace
Pace“节奏”，给两个非常百搭的使用场景：
“快节奏生活” fast pace of life/ fast-paced life(style)。例句：In our fast-paced lives, we're quickly scrolling through our social media feeds and people want to stand out, attract our attention and be noticed.
“以自己的节奏” at one’s own pace。例句：The subjects were to press a button for each word at their own pace.
一个小词：As
它是一个非常非常容易被用错的小词，我见太多同学踩过雷，主要是因为没有分清它的词性。大家知道英文中许多单词都有不同词性，不同词性下意思相同那就好办一点比如increase作名词动词都表示“增加”。
As的坑在于它的几个词性意思区别蛮大的很容易傻傻分不清楚，比较这篇文章中出现的几次as（按出现的先后顺序）:
- Did language start with song, as Darwin believed?
- They also heard music as they performed this exercise.
- As adults, they create striking and novel utterances every day.
- It may not instill wonder and joy, as music can.
在上面四个句子里只有第三句as接了一个名词，另外几句话as后面都是接句子，乱没乱？大家只需要记住一点：当as表示“作为（身份）”时，它是一个介词prep.后接名词性成分。而表示其他意思下比如“随着、由于、依照”等，它是一个连词conj.后面接句子。所以一定不能直接用as来替换with哦~
原文：For all the overlap, there are big differences. Both music and language can make you feel and even think, but only language is truly propositional. A quip attributed to Bertrand Russell—“no matter how eloquently a dog may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were poor but honest”—might be adapted for music. Language can express contingencies, pose counterfactuals and talk about the future. Music’s nuances are of a different order. Another stark contrast lies in the range of human aptitude for each ability. Nearly all children produce complex sentences by the age of three and become fluent speakers just a few years after that. As adults, they create striking and novel utterances every day. Conversely, only a minority of adults are talented musicians; even fewer are skilled composers of new, hitherto unheard works.
Victor Wooten, a bass player and music teacher, has an explanation for that disparity. Children, he points out, learn to talk by being constantly surrounded by linguistic virtuosos—fluent older speakers who, in musical parlance, are “jamming” with the novices almost from birth. Their fumbling efforts are encouraged. On the other hand, students of music often keep company with other beginners, and are stopped every time they make a mistake. It is not that simple, reckons Jay Keyser, an emeritus professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a jazz trombonist. For him, music is not like spoken prose, which almost everyone can do proficiently, but instead resembles a specific, rhythmic form of language: poetry. And, he says, “most human beings are bad at poetry.” The number of grammatical sentences is vast. But the number that are fit for verse, in terms of both meaning and prosody, is much smaller. Finding those is hard—like composing music, or improvising jazz. On Mr Keyser’s plausible view, using ordinary language is a less rarefied talent than making music. But while it may not instill wonder and joy, as music can, it is still a miracle—just an everyday one.
文章的最后一个部分站到了对立面，比较语言与音乐的大不同，比如表意和掌握程度上的差异，这部分写得很有意思大家可以详细看看。至于为什么会有这样的区别，也引用了两组论据。
其中一组分析了二者的学习路径。婴儿学习语言有两个优势：和他们日常交流对话的（成年人）已经掌握了足够的语言技巧，且宝宝们说啥大人都觉得萌萌哒，简单来说就是“专家鼓励型”教育。但是，音乐学习一般是这样哒：和你一起学的都是些渣渣，你拉跑调了隔壁小王同学比你跑更远，教室里充斥着老师的怒吼Again!! 可以总结为“鞭策弱鸡型”教育。我小时候也学过几样乐器，小提琴啊吉他啥地，现在也就能弹出个响吧。大概就是因为遭受到这种精神迫害了。
一个句式：“两者的鲜明对比在于X”
- 原文：Another stark contrast lies in the range of human aptitude for each ability.
- 翻译：另一个鲜明的对比是，对两种能力（语言和音乐）人类的天资不同。
抠一个万能句式：A/Another stark contrast (between A and B) lies in C. 其中A/B如果想省事也可以删掉，C必须是一个名词性成分。如果你特别想要写句子，可以把C部分展开为一个名词性从句，比如：Another stark contrast lies in the range of human aptitude for each ability 可以展开为 Another stark contrast between language and music lies in the fact that the range of human aptitude for each ability varies.
一个小词：少
- 原文：Conversely, only a minority of adults are talented musicians; even fewer are skilled composers of new, hitherto unheard works.
- 翻译：相反，只有少数成年人是才华横溢的音乐家，能创作出迄今为止尚未问世的新作的天才型作曲家就更少了。
我们经常需要表达“少”这个概念，文中提供了两组素材：a minority of以及fewer。看上去简单但是大家平时都不太会想起来用它们，尤其是fewer这个小词特别被less张冠李戴，很多英语学习者都犯过less people/ less students类似这样的错误。当我们想表示“少/更少X”，如果X是一个可数名词，则更适合用few/fewer来修饰，比如文中的fewer adults；只有当X是不可数名词时，才会用little/less呐~
本期读报时间结束，就着文章讲了两个句式、四个小词，希望你觉得有用。
我要继续去建设我美丽的小岛了！！这两天被邀请去参观了几个奢华小岛，感觉很对不起我依然住在帐篷里的岛民😭
OVER~
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