2017考研英语拓展阅读：科学家可让猴子说“人话”

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　　2017考研英语拓展阅读：科学家可让猴子说“人话”

　　Monkeys have the vocal tracts to produce human speech sounds, but what they lack is a speech-ready brain, a new study has found.

　　据一项新研究发现，猴子的声道可以发出人类语言的声音，但是它们缺少一个会说话的大脑。

　　The study, conducted by researchers from the U.S. and Europe and published this week in the U.S. journal Science Advances, used X-ray video to see within the mouth and throat of macaque monkeys induced to vocalize, eat food, or make facial expressions.

　　这份研究由美国和欧洲的研究者们联合进行、发表在本周的美国杂志《科学进展(Science Advances)》上，在猕猴发出声音、进食和做出面部表情时，使用X射线频来观察它们嘴巴和喉咙内部。

　　The scientists then used these data to build a computer model of a monkey vocal tract, allowing them to answer the question "what would monkey speech sound like, if a human brain were in control?"

　　科学家们随后用这些数据建立了一个猴子声道的电脑模型，从而使得他们回答这一问题--“如果猴子长了人脑，那么它们的语言是什么样的?”

　　The results showed that monkeys could easily produce many different sounds, enough to produce thousands of distinct words.

　　结果表明猴子可以轻松地发出许多不同的声音，足以产生上万个不同的词汇。

　　For example, monkeys could produce comprehensible vowel sounds -- and even full sentences -- with their vocal tracts if they had the neural ability to speak.

　　举例来说，如果猴子说话的神经能力的话，它们可以用自己的声道说出可理解的元音--甚至是完整的句子。

　　The researchers noted, however, that while monkeys would be understandable to the human ear, they would not sound precisely like humans.

　　然而研究者们指出，虽然人类可以理解说的话，但是它们的声音却和人类不大一样。

　　Therefore, the researchers concluded that previous research -- largely based on plaster casts made from the vocal tracts of a monkey cadaver -- underestimates primate vocal abilities and that evolution of human speech capabilities required neural changes rather than an adaptation of vocal anatomy.

　　因此研究者们作出结论认为，之前的研究(很大程度上基于一只死亡猴子声道的石膏模型)低估了灵长类动物的发声能力，而人类语言能力进化需要的是神经的改变而不是声道生理构造的改变。

　　"Now nobody can say that it’s something about the vocal anatomy that keeps monkeys from being able to speak -- it has to be something in the brain," said Asif Ghazanfar, a professor of psychology at the Princeton University and one of the study leaders.

　　该项研究领导者之一、普林斯顿大学心理学教授阿西夫表示说：“现在没人说猴子不能说话是因为声道生理构造和人类不同啦--而是它们大脑里的东西和人类不同。”

　　"Even if this finding only applies to macaque monkeys, it would still debunk the idea that it’s the anatomy that limits speech in nonhumans."

　　“即使这一发现只适用于猕猴，它仍然会打破认为非人生物在语言方面的限制是因为它们声道生理构造和人类不同这一思想。”

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