高中英语 精华双语文章 何为模糊语言素材.docVIP

高中精华双语文章：何为模糊语言 在我们的日常讲话中，很大一部分是由“也许”、“好多”、“不久”、“大量”这类词汇所构成的，这些就是所谓的模糊语言。当我们不能用精确的数量来叙述时，这种模糊语言就使我们表达出了对各种事物的判断。研究人员通过实验来解释在特定的语言环境中，人们使用这些词语用于表达哪些意思，不同年龄的人用词时意义又有哪些变化。 What is the Language of Uncertainty 何为模糊语言 Uncertainty spreads through our lives so thoroughly that it dominates our language. Our everyday speech is made up in large part of words like probably, many, soon, great, little. What do these words mean? Atomic war, declared a recent editorial in the London Times, is likely to destroy forever the nation that wages it. How exactly are we to understand the word likely? Lacking any standard for estimating the probability, we are left with the judgment of the editorial writer. 模糊现象已经无孔不入地扩展到我们生活的各个方面，以致模糊现象也扩展到了我们的语言当中。我们的日常讲话很大一部分是由也许、 好多、不久、大量、很少这类词汇所构成的。这些词汇意味着什么？英国伦敦《泰晤士报》在最近的一篇社论中说原子战争很可能会永久性地毁灭了进行原子战的国家。我们怎样才能确切地理解很可能这个词汇？因为要估计某事的可能性，没有什么标准可依据，我们只能由着社论的作者去估计判断了。 Such verbal imprecision is not necessarily to be criticised. Indeed, it has a value just because it allows us to express judgments when a precise quantitative statement is out of the question. 对这种用词不够精确的模糊语言，倒不一定要加以批评责备。其实，这种模糊语言有它一定的使用价值，因为当我们不能用精确的数量来叙述时，这种模糊语言使我们能表达出对各种事物的判断。 The language of uncertainty has three main categories: (1) words such as probably, possibly, surely, which denote a single subjective probability and are potentially quantifiable; (2) words like many, often, soon, which are also quantifiable but denote not so much a condition of uncertainty as a quantity imprecisely known; (3) words like fat, rich, drunk, which can not be reduced to any accepted number because they are given different values by different people. 模糊语言有三大类：（1）很可能、有可能、肯定会之类的词。这类词表示个人主观认为的可能性，这些词在发言人的心目中是有一定的潜在的数量的；（2）很多、经常、很快之类的词表示的是模糊的状况倒不如说表达的是知道得不够确切的数量；（3）肥胖、富有、酒醉之类的词，这类词不能精确到大家都能同意接受的数字。因为不同的人对这些词都会有不同的评价。 We have been trying to pin down by experiments what people mean by these expressions in specific contexts, and how the meanings change with age. For instance, a subject is told There are many trees