『週刊ST』5/26「TOEFL® iBT対策講座」問題

Indo-European Languages

1. Linguistics, the scientific study of language, can reach more deeply into the human past than the most ancient written records. It compares related languages to reconstruct their immediate [progenitors] and eventually their ultimate ancestor, or protolanguage. The protolanguage in turn illuminates the lives of its speakers and locates them in time and place.
2. The science developed from the study of the Indo-European superfamily of languages, by far the largest in number of languages and number of speakers. Nearly half of the world's population speaks an Indo-European language as a first language; six of the 10 languages in which Scientific American appears, English, French, German, Italian, Russian and Spanish, belong to this superfamily.
3. Over the past 200 years, linguists have reconstructed the vocabulary and syntax of the postulated Indo-European protolanguage with increasing confidence and [insight]. They have tried to unravel the paths by which the language broke into daughter languages that spread throughout Eurasia, seeking at the origin of those paths the homeland of the protolanguage itself. The early investigators placed the homeland in Europe and posited migratory paths by which the daughter languages evolved into clearly defined Eastern or Western branches. Recent research indicates that the protolanguage originated more than 6,000 years ago in eastern Anatolia — that part of Turkey that lies in Asia — and that some daughter languages must have differentiated in the course of migrations that took them first to the East and later to the West.
4. The reconstruction of ancient languages may be likened to the method used by molecular biologists in their quest to understand the evolution of life. The biochemist identifies molecular elements that perform similar functions in widely [divergent] species to infer the characteristics of the primordial cell from which they are presumed to have descended. So does the linguist seek correspondences in grammar, syntax, vocabulary and vocalization among known languages in order to reconstruct their immediate forebears and ultimately the original tongue. Living languages can be compared directly with one another; dead languages that have survived in written form can usually be vocalized by [inference] from internal linguistic evidence. Dead languages that have never been written, however, can be reconstructed only by comparing their descendants and by working backward according to the laws that govern phonological change. Phonology, the study of word sounds, is all-important to historical linguists because sounds are more stable over the centuries than are meanings.
5. Early studies of Indo-European languages focused on those most familiar to the original European researchers: the Italic, Celtic, Germanic, Baltic and Slavic families. Affinities between these and the “Aryan” languages spoken in faraway India were noticed by European travelers as early as the 16th century. That they might all share a common ancestor was first proposed in 1786 by Sir William Jones, an English jurist and student of Eastern cultures. He thus launched what came to be known as the Indo-European hypothesis, which served as the principal stimulus to the founders of historical linguistics in the 19th century.
6. In the 2,000 years before the Indo-Europeans who remained in the homeland began to write history, the success of the agricultural revolution brought a population explosion to the Indo-European community. [The pressure of population, we may surmise, compelled the migration of successive waves of Indo-Europeans to fertile areas that were not yet cultivated.]
7. The linguistic translocation of the Indo-European homeland from northern Europe to Asia Minor requires drastic revisions in theories about the migratory paths along which the Indo-European languages must have spread across Eurasia. Thus, the hypothetical Aryans who were said to have borne the so-called Aryan, or Indo-Iranian, language from Europe to India, and who were conscripted into service as the Nordic supermen of Nazi mythology turn out to be the real Indo-Iranians who made the more plausible migration from Asia Minor around the northern slopes of the Himalayan Mountains and down through modern Afghanistan to settle in India. [A] Europe is seen, therefore, as the destination, rather than the source, of Indo-European migration.
8. [B] The more extensive migrations of speakers of the Greek-Armenian-Indo-Iranian dialects began with the breakup of the main Indo-European language community in the third millennium B.C. [C] Two groups of Indo-Iranian speakers made their way East during the second millennium B.C. One of them, speakers of the Kafiri languages, survives to this day in Nuristan, on the southern slopes of the Hindu Kush in northeast Afghanistan. [D]

1. The word [progenitors] in the passage is closest in meaning to
   
   
   
   1. predecessors
   
   
   2. similarities
   
   
   3. old dialects
   
   
   4. common roots


2. Why does the author mention Scientific American in paragraph 2?
   
   
   
   1. Because it is a very well-known magazine.
   
   
   2. Because it publishes articles about linguistics.
   
   
   3. Because over half the languages it’s published in are Indo-European.
   
   
   4. Because all the languages it’s published in are Indo-European.


3. The word [insight] in the passage is closest in meaning to
   
   
   
   1. accuracy
   
   
   2. complexity
   
   
   3. ease
   
   
   4. understanding


4. According to paragraph 3, what have linguists been trying to establish?
   
   
   
   1. Where the Indo-European languages originated from.
   
   
   2. The process by which the Indo-European languages spread.
   
   
   3. Why the Indo-European languages are so widespread.
   
   
   4. How the protolanguage developed.


5. Why are molecular biologists mentioned?
   
   
   
   1. Because biologists have used the research methods first used by linguists.
   
   
   2. Because linguists based their methods on those used by biologists.
   
   
   3. As an example of how different the natural sciences are from linguistics.
   
   
   4. Because both linguists and molecular biologists work from the known to the unknown.


6. The word [divergent] in the passage is closest in meaning to
   
   
   
   1. similar
   
   
   2. different
   
   
   3. familiar
   
   
   4. currently existing


7. The word [inference] in the passage could best be replaced by
   
   
   
   1. guesswork
   
   
   2. deduction
   
   
   3. interpretation
   
   
   4. sampling


8. What is the Indo-European hypothesis?
   
   
   
   1. The notion that most European languages as well as certain languages in India are descended from the same source.
   
   
   2. The idea that the major language families in Europe originally came from India.
   
   
   3. The observation that there are similarities between Indian and European languages.
   
   
   4. The belief that similarities between certain European and Indian languages cannot be easily explained.


9. Which of the sentences below best expresses the information in the underlined statement in the passage? The other choices change the meaning or leave out important information.
   
   
   
   1. We are now certain that the Indo-European migration took place because the land could no longer sustain them.
   
   
   2. We can know from historical records that the Indo-Europeans migrated in order to find uncultivated fertile land.
   
   
   3. Although we can’t know for sure, we can assume that shortage of uncultivated fertile land forced a series of Indo-European migrations.
   
   
   4. We can conjecture that the Indo-Europeans migrated when the land became infertile.


10. What change in linguists’ perception of the origins of Indo-European languages is discussed in paragraph 7?
    
    
    
    1. The Indo-European languages originated in Northern Europe rather than India.
    
    
    2. The Indo-European languages originated in Iran rather than India.
    
    
    3. The Indo-European languages originated in Asia Minor rather than Northern Europe.
    
    
    4. The Indo-European languages originated in India rather than Asia Minor.


11. What is this passage mainly concerned with?
    
    
    
    1. The development of linguistics.
    
    
    2. The origin of the Indo-European languages.
    
    
    3. How ancient languages are reconstructed.
    
    
    4. Early migrations in Europe and Asia.


12. Four boxes, A, B, C and D indicate where the following sentence can be added to the passage. “Speakers of the Hittite, Luwian and other Anatolian languages made relatively small migrations within the homeland, and their languages died there with them.” Where would it best fit?
    
    
    
    1. 　
    
    
    2. 　
    
    
    3. 　
    
    
    4. 　


13. Directions: An introductory sentence for a brief summary of the passage is provided below. Complete the summary by selecting the THREE answer choices (by numbering the boxes) that express the most important ideas in the passage. Some sentences do not belong in the summary because they express ideas that are not presented in the passage or are minor ideas in the passage. This question is worth 2 points.

    The science of linguistics strives to reconstruct the ancestral languages from which modern languages are descended.
    


Answer Choices

□　Linguists have long tried to identify the source of these Indo-European languages.

□　The Indo-European hypothesis dates from 1786 when it was first put forward by Sir William Jones.

□　The Indo-European superfamily of languages can be subdivided into a number of smaller families.

□　The methods linguists use to reconstruct ancient languages are similar to those used by molecular biologists to understand the evolution of life.

□　It used to be thought that the Indo-European languages originated in Europe but now it seems more likely that they came from Asia Minor.

□　This science developed from the recognition that there are similarities between languages spoken in Europe and ones spoken in India.

Number the boxes according to where the answer choices belong in the summary.