字神帝國英語天地

今日主題：Bonobo Peeps May Be Necessary Language Precursors
倭黑猩猩的叫聲或為語言先導

托福聽力最好的課外教材：60-Second Science
康康精選托福會考的主題，堅持每天精聽一定會進步的哦!!

建議方法：
1. 先聽兩三遍(不看文稿)
2. 再一句一句聽寫
3. 最後check文稿，看哪聽不出來，是單字沒背過，還是單字發音不熟。
4. 堅持天天聽，就能每天進步哦。

MP3音檔：喜歡的同學，幫忙推或按讚哦~~
http://online1.tingclass.net/voaspe/2015/20150817sa_mind.mp3

只有音檔怎夠，聽不懂地方，不用怕，
康康幫你準備好中英文稿了：

中英文稿：
Babies sometimes laugh and sometimes cry. It doesn't take a genius to decode the meaning of these sounds. But it isn't quite as straightforward to decipher the meaning, if any, of an infant's babbles. And humans a little older can make the same sounds regardless of how you actually feel—you're able to say 「I'm hungry」 whether you're ravenous or just gorged yourself.
嬰兒有時候哭，有時候笑。即使不是天才，我們也能知道這些聲音的含義。但是對於嬰兒的牙牙學語，想要知道其中的意思，並不是那麼簡單。人類稍微大一些後，不管自己實際的感覺是什麼，也會發出此類的聲音——你能說「我餓了」不論你是真的餓了，還是只是嘴饞而已。

Scientists think that the ability to make the same sounds across a range of emotional states is critical to language development. They also believe it to be uniquely human, because in previous studies of animal communication, researchers only observed fixed vocalizations. For example, bonobo chimpanzee pant-laughs and threat barks are tied to a specific emotion or behavior.
科學家們認為跨越一系列的情緒狀態能夠發出同樣聲音對於語言發展很重要。同時，他們也認為這是人類所特有的，因為在先前關於對動物交流的研究中，研究者們發現動物只存在固定的聲音模式。例如，倭黑猩猩喘氣大笑以及威脅性的叫聲都與特定的情緒和行為有關。

But the new study finds evidence that bonobos in the wild are also capable of flexible vocalizations. Bonobos have a specific call type, a 「peep」 that they use independent of emotional context. They peep while eating, travelling, grooming, resting, engaging in sexual activity, and even during shows of aggression.
但是新的研究證明野生的倭黑猩猩也能夠靈活的發聲。倭猩猩有一種特別的叫聲，它們使用這種叫聲不依賴情感交流。它們會在吃飯，旅行，理毛，休息，談戀愛或者甚至在好鬥侵略狀態下發出這種聲音。

Because peeps, like a baby's babbles, don't convey meaningful information on their own, bonobos need to combine them with other calls and environmental context to supply meanings. Previously, researchers thought this type of complex, language-like comprehension was unique to humans. The study is in the journal PeerJ.
因為這種叫聲，就跟嬰兒的牙牙學語一樣，本身並沒有傳遞有意義的信息。倭黑猩猩需要將這種聲音和其他的聲音以及自然環境相結合來傳遞信息。之前，研究者們認為這種複雜的、類似語言的領悟能力是人類所特有的。該研究發表在PeeJ雜誌上。

Bonobos are our closest evolutionary relatives, so it's possible that the functional flexibility of human speech appeared in a common ancestor. This discovery adds to the growing pile of evidence that we're not quite as special as we've long believed—and that our furry cousins may be even closer to us than we thought.
人類在進化上最接近倭黑猩猩。所以，人類言語上的這種功能上的靈活性會出現和我們有共同祖先的另一種物種上。這項研究成果更加有力的證明了人類沒有像長期以來我們相信的那樣與眾不同——並且我們和那些有毛的兄弟之間的親戚關係可能比我們想像的還要近。