剑桥雅思4 Test 3阅读原文翻译 obtaining linguistic data

剑4 Test 3 Passage 3阅读原文翻译

A自然段

Many procedures are available for obtaining data about a language. They range from a carefully planned, intensive field investigation in a foreign country to a casual introspection about one’s mother tongue carried out in an armchair at home.

许多步骤可用于获取有关语言的数据。从在国外精心计划，深入的野外调查到在家里的扶手椅上对自己的母语进行随意的内省，其范围十分广泛。

B自然段

In all cases, someone has to act as a source of language data – an informant. Informants are (ideally) native speakers of a language, who provide utterances for analysis and other kinds of information about the language (e.g. translations, comments about correctness, or judgements on usage). Often, when studying their mother tongue, linguists act as their own informants, judging the ambiguity, acceptability, or other properties of utterances against their own intuitions. The convenience of this approach makes it widely used, and it is considered the norm in the generative approach to linguistics. But a linguist’s personal judgements are often uncertain, or disagree with the judgements of other linguists, at which point recourse is needed to more objective methods of enquiry, using non-linguists as informants. The latter procedure is unavoidable when working on foreign languages, or child speech.

在所有情况下，都必须有人充当语言数据的来源-信息提供者。信息提供者（理想地）是该语言的母语使用者，他们提供话语用于分析和其他有关该语言的信息（例如，翻译，对正确性的评论或对使用的判断）。通常，在研究母语时，语言学家会充当自己的信息提供者，克服自己直觉的影响来判断话语的模糊性，可接受性或其他性质。这种方法因其便利性被广泛使用，并且被认为是语言学生成方法中的规范。但是语言学家的个人判断通常是不确定的，或者与其他语言学家的判断不一致，这时需要使用非语言学家作为信息提供者，采用更为客观的询问方法。研究外语或者儿童语言时，后一种方式是不可避免的。

C自然段

Many factors must be considered when selecting informants – whether one is working with single speakers (a common situation when languages have not been described before), two people interacting, small groups or large-scale samples. Age, sex, social background and other aspects of identity are important, as these factors are known to influence the kind of language used. The topic of conversation and the characteristics of the social setting (e.g. the level of formality) are also highly relevant, as are the personal qualities of the informants (e.g. their fluency and consistency). For larger studies, scrupulous attention has been paid to the sampling theory employed, and in all cases, decisions have to be made about the best investigative techniques to use.

选择信息提供者时，必须考虑许多因素-一个人是在与单个说话者进行研究（当语言之前没有被描述过一种普遍情况），还是两个人互动，又或者是小组或大型样本。年龄，性别，社会背景和身份认同的其他方面都很重要，因为众所周知文章来自老烤鸭雅思这些因素会影响所用语言的种类。谈话的话题和社会环境的特征（例如，正式程度）也高度相关，信息提供者的个人素质（例如，他们的流利程度和连贯性）也是如此。对于较大的研究，它们所采用的抽样理论通常经过仔细的考虑，并且在所有情况下，都必须对将要使用的最佳调查技术做决定。

D自然段

Today, researchers often tape-record informants. This enables the linguist’s claims about the language to be checked, and provides a way of making those claims more accurate (‘difficult’ pieces of speech can be listened to repeatedly). But obtaining naturalistic, good-quality data is never easy. People talk abnormally when they know they are being recorded, and sound quality can be poor. A variety of tape-recording procedures have thus been devised to minimise the ‘observer’s paradox’ (how to observe the way people behave when they are not being observed). Some recordings are made without the speakers being aware of the fact – a procedure that obtains very natural data, though ethical objections must be anticipated. Alternatively, attempts can be made to make the speaker forget about the recording, such as keeping the tape recorder out of sight, or using radio microphones. A useful technique is to introduce a topic that quickly involves the speaker, and stimulates a natural language style (e.g. asking older informants about how times have changed in their locality).

现在研究人员经常使用录音带记录信息提供者。这使得语言学家对语言的主张得以检查，并提供了一种使这些主张更加准确的方法（可以反复听“难”的语音）。但是获取自然，高质量的数据绝非易事。人们在知道自己正在被录音时说话会比较反常，而且音质可能很差。因此，已经设计出各种磁带记录步骤以最小化“观察者悖论”的存在（如何观察人们在不被观察时的行为方式）。某些录音是在发言者没有意识到这一事实的情况下进行的，该过程获得非常自然的数据，尽管必须考虑到道德上的反对。或者，可以尝试让说话者忘掉录音的事情，例如将录音机放在视线以外，或使用无线麦克风。一种有用的方法是引入一个说话者能够迅速参与进来的主题，并激发一种自然的语言风格（例如，向年长的信息提供者询问当地时间如何变化）。

E自然段

An audio tape recording does not solve all the linguist’s problems, however. Speech is often unclear and ambiguous. Where possible, therefore, the recording has to be supplemented by the observer’s written comments on the non-verbal behaviour of the participants, and about the context in general. A facial expression, for example, can dramatically alter the meaning of what is said. Video recordings avoid these problems to a large extent, but even they have limitations (the camera cannot be everywhere), and transcriptions always benefit from any additional commentary provided by an observer.

但是  ，录音带并不能解决所有语言学家的问题。言语常常不清晰，模棱两可。因此，在可能的情况下，录音必须由观察者对参与者的非语言行为以及一般情况加以书面评论进行补充。例如，面部表情可以大大改变所说内容的含义。录像在很大程度上避免了这些问题，但是即使它们也有局限性（摄像机不能无处不在），并且转录总是可以从观察者所提供的任何附加评论中受益。

F自然段

Linguists also make great use of structured sessions, in which they systematically ask their informants for utterances that describe certain actions, objects or behaviour. With a bilingual informant, or through use of an interpreter, it is possible to use translation techniques (‘How do you say table in your language?’). A large number of points can be covered in a short time, using interview worksheets and questionnaires. Often, the researcher wishes to obtain information about just a single variable, in which case a restricted set of questions may be used: a particular feature of pronunciation, for example, can be elicited by asking the informant to say a restricted set of words. There are also several direct methods of elicitation, such as asking informants to fill in the blanks in a substitution frame (e.g. /__ see a car), or feeding them the wrong stimulus for correction (‘Is it possible to say I no can see?’).

语言学家还充分利用结构化的会话。在这种会话中，他们系统地要求信息提供者用语言描述某些动作，对象或行为。双语信息提供者的存在或者口译员的使用，使得翻译方法称为可能（“你在你的语言中如何表达“stable”）。使用访谈工作表和问卷调查，可以在短时间内涵盖大量要点。研究人员经常希望获取有关单个变量的信息。在这种情况下，可以使用一组受限的问题：例如，可以通过要求信息提供者说出一组受限的单词来得出发音的特定特征。也有几种直接的启发方法，例如要求信息提供者补完句子（例如我 __看到汽车），或向他们提供错误的刺激以求纠正（“是否可以说I no can see ？）。

G自然段

A representative sample of language, compiled for the purpose of linguistic analysis, is known as a corpus. A corpus enables the linguist to make unbiased statements about frequency of usage, and it provides accessible data for the use of different researchers. Its range and size are variable. Some corpora attempt to cover the language as a whole, taking extracts from many kinds of text; others are extremely selective, providing a collection of material that deals only with a particular linguistic feature. The size of the corpus depends on practical factors, such as the time available to collect, process and store the data: it can take up to several hours to provide an accurate transcription of a few minutes of speech. Sometimes a small sample of data will be enough to decide a linguistic hypothesis; by contrast, corpora in major research projects can total millions of words. An important principle is that all corpora, what-ever their size, are inevitably limited in their coverage, and always need to be supplemented by data derived from the intuitions of native speakers of the language, through either introspection or experimentation.

为语言分析目的而编纂的，某种语言具有代表性的样本被称为语料库。语料库使语言学家能够对使用频率做出公正的论述，并提供可访问的数据供不同研究人员使用。其范围和大小是可变的。一些语料库尝试从多种文本中摘录，以涵盖整个语言。其他的则是非常有选择性的，提供了仅涉及特定语言特点的材料的集合。语料库的大小取决于实际因素，例如可用于收集，处理和存储数据的时间：可能需要花费几个小时才能准确记录几分钟的语音。有时，少量的数据样本就足以决定语言假设。相比之下，大型研究项目中的语料库可以涵盖数百万个单词。一个重要的原则是，无论大小如何，所有语料库的覆盖范围都不可避免地受到限制，并且总是需要通过内省或实验，从母语人士的直觉中获得的数据进行补充。

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