新托福阅读真题题源：Origins of language

The origins of human language will perhaps remain forever obscure. By contrast the origin of individual languages has been the subject of very precise study over the past two centuries.

There are about 5000 languages spoken in the world today (a third of them in Africa ), but scholars group them together into relatively few families - probably less than twenty. Languages are linked to each other by shared words or sounds or grammatical constructions. The theory is that the members of each linguistic group have descended from one language, a common ancestor. In many cases that original language is judged by the experts to have been spoken in surprisingly recent times - as little as a few thousand years ago.

The most widespread group of languages today is the Indo-European, spoken by half the world’s population. This entire group, ranging from Hindi and Persian to Norwegian and English, is believed to descend from the language of a tribe of nomads roaming the plains of eastern Europe and western Asia (in modern terms centring on the Ukraine) as recently as about 3000 BC.

From about 2000 BC people speaking Indo-European languages begin to spread through Europe, eventually reaching the Atlantic coast and the northern shores of the Mediterranean . They also penetrate far into Asia - occupying the Iranian plateau and much of India .

Another linguistic group, of significance in the early history of west Asia and still of great importance today, is the Semitic family of languages. These also are believed to derive from the language of just one tribal group, possibly nomads in southern Arabia .

By about 3000 BC Semitic languages are spoken over a large tract of desert territory from southern Arabia to the north of Syria . Several Semitic peoples play a prominent part in the early civilization of the region, from the Babylonians and Assyrians to the Hebrews and Phoenicians. And one Semitic language, Aramaic, becomes for a while the Lingua franca of the Middle East .

3. 讲述非洲的面具，有两种，一种是罩住整个人的脸直到肩膀的，另一种是戴在头顶上不遮脸的。文章主要意思是，面具这种称呼在非洲是没有的，他们使用的这种“面具”，通常被用在部落的仪式、重要人事变动（如族长等）、疾病的祷告、农作物收成的祈祷中（唯独没有对邻部落的战争，有题）。这种“面具”，被人们用各种树叶、颜料等装饰着，反应了这些物品本来的特质和意义。人们发现带上面具进行仪式的人，本身进入了一种奇特的精神状态，并且这种状态不是戴面具者有意表现出来的，这是一种由面具所反应的含义带来的精神回馈。

非洲土着的面具

非洲土着有着自己的面具文化，有两种面具，一种是整个套头上的，主要是动物，有型的物体；另一个是戴在头顶的，凋刻的东西就不那麽规矩了（有题，这两种面具的主要区别）。两个面具都是用软木做的，凋刻了以后都用植物天然的染料浸染，然后再加上羽毛之类的做装饰。

他们的面具是没有各自的名字的，所以我们不能在他们的语言中找到一个表示mask的准确单词（有题）。他们的表演者再带上mask以后就不是人了，他不是在假装一个角色，而是被当作一个外来的灵魂附着于这个人之上（有题，改写关于戴上面具后的人的状态）。（有题，他们的面具和其他地方的有什麽区别）。他们的面具具有许多象徵性质和功能，宗教仪式和政治仪式中必不可少，特别是人的status的变化仪式时。（有题，面具在哪些意识中起作用）每一个面具都有自己特有的gesture和movement（有题，解释gesture）。

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