2. 外语
  3. For the most part, the thousands of languages in the world today fall into one of two categories: tonal or nontonal. Two lingui

For the most part, the thousands of languages in the world today fall into one of two categories: tonal or nontonal. Two lingui

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问题     For the most part, the thousands of languages in the world today fall into
one of two categories: tonal or nontonal. Two linguists believe they know
the genetic underpinnings for these differences. During a study of linguistic
and genetic data from 49 distinctive populations, the authors discovered a (1)______
struck correlation between two genes involved in brain development and (2)______
language tonality. Populations who speak nontonal languages have newer (3)______
versions of the genes, with mutations that began to appear roughly 37
thousand years before. "You can consider this as the first of the many pos- (4)______
sible studies that we could do to try to find a genetic basis for language and
language typology and the different populations that speak a language,"
says Patrick Wong, the assistant professor at Northwestern University, who (5)______
was not involved in this study. In English, the pitch which a word is spoken (6)______
convey emotion but usually does not affect its meaning. But in many (7)______
languages tone changes the meaning of words. For instance, the Chinese
word huar said in a high pitch means flower, but in a dipping pitch meaning (8)______
picture. The new research ties this difference to those two genes. The exact (9)______
functions of both genes are still open to debate, so they are known to affect (10)______
brain size during embryonic development. They presumably have something
to do with brain structure, because there are mutations of the genes that lead
to microcephaly, a condition in which a person’s brain is much smaller than
the average size for his or her age.
(4)
选项
答案before — ago
解析 当需要表示相对于此时此刻而言的“……时间以前”时，要用ago；如果含义是“过去或者将来某个时刻之前”或者“另一个事件之前”，那么就用before。
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