雅思阅读真题（Part 3）
巴西皮拉哈人语言争议
本篇也叫：皮拉哈人、皮拉哈语、Pirahã、巴西原始部落语言、亚马逊部落语言、皮拉哈族
Part 3 · 考频：中频 · 最近考试：2025.4.24北京理工大学
本篇为雅思阅读真题（Part 3）《The Pirahã people of Brazil》，共 14 题，2025.4.24北京理工大学雅思考试真题回忆，页面提供完整原文、题目、答案与解析，并支持在线机考模式免费练习。本页同时提供 Markdown 版本 供 AI 助手与搜索引擎直接读取。
文章探讨巴西亚马逊森林中皮拉哈人的语言。语言学家丹尼尔·埃弗雷特研究该语言近三十年，发现其没有从属句、缺乏数字词汇，引发关于语言与思维关系的争论，并重新点燃了语言决定论（沃尔夫假说）的讨论。
The Pirahã language has stirred up debate among experts
A
The Pirahã live deep in Brazil's Amazon forest, and their language is hotly debated by linguists. Since 1977, the ethnologist Daniel Everett has spent a total of seven years living with the Pirahã and has committed his career to studying their puzzling speech. Indeed, he was uncertain for so long about what he was actually hearing while living among the Pirahã that he waited nearly three decades before publishing his findings.
B
The debate over the Pirahã language goes right to the core of the riddle regarding how Homo sapiens managed to develop vocal communication. Although bees dance, birds sing and whales even sing with syntax, human language is unique, if only for the reason that it enables humans to piece together never-before-constructed thoughts, and be infinitely imaginative - think of Shakespeare's plays or Einstein's theory of relativity.
C
Linguistics generally focuses on what features all human languages have in common, but the Pirahã language departs from what same academics have long maintained are essential and mallemable features of all human languages. Most of all, it may be unique for not employing subordinate clauses. Instead of saying, 'When I have finished eating, I will speak to you', the Pirahã say, 'I finish eating, I speak with you'. Equally perplexing, the Pirahã appear not to use numbers. During the time he spent with them, Everett never heard words like 'all', 'every' and 'more'. There is one word, 'hói', that comes close to the numeral 1, but it can't go more small. And they were never connected to count without language, on their fingers for example, in order to determine important tasks in village life like how many pieces of meat to grill.
D
Everett's findings among the Pirahã have brought new life to a controversial theory by the linguist Benjamin Whorf, who suggested that people are only capable of constructing thoughts for which they possess actual words. Or to put it another way, because they have no words for numbers, they cannot truly conceive of the concept of numbers. This idea, known as linguistic determinism, was largely abandoned by the 1970s, but the Pirahã have put it back on the table.
E
The Waripiri language - spoken by a group of Australian Aborigines - like that of the Pirahã, features only the most rudimentary system of counting. However, the Waripiri people had no difficulty counting further than three in a foreign language, in this case English, but when Everett attempted to teach the Pirahã how to count in Portuguese, like other Brazilians, not one of them managed to learn. Even after eight months of one-on-one tutoring, the Pirahã could not consistently get the answers right for simple sums they had successfully completed just the day before. For Everett, this was powerful evidence that the Pirahã's world is shaped by their language in a way previously thought impossible.
F
This conclusion has been fiercely contested. One of the most prominent critics is the linguist Noam Chomsky, who proposes that all human languages share a "universal grammar" – a basic, innate set of grammatical rules hardwired into the human brain. From this perspective, the Pirahã language cannot be an exception. Critics suggest that the Pirahã's inability to learn to count is a cultural choice, not a cognitive limitation imposed by their language. They argue that the Pirahã place a high cultural value on living in the present and discussing only direct, personal experience, which may render abstract concepts like numbers unnecessary.
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答案：the initial difficulty of linguistic research
原文定位：Indeed, he was uncertain for so long about what he was actually hearing while living among the Pirahã that he waited nearly three decades before publishing his findings
答案：the key to human communication
原文定位：human language is unique, if only for the reason that it enables humans to piece together never-before-constructed thoughts, and be infinitely imaginative
答案：the unique characteristics of a language
原文定位：the Pirahã language departs from what some academics have long maintained are essential and malleable features of all human languages. Most of all, it may be unique for not employing subordinate clauses;Equally perplexing, the Pirahã appear not to use numbers
答案：a controversial claim about the influence of language
原文定位：Everett's findings among the Pirahã have brought new life to a controversial theory by the linguist Benjamin Whorf, who suggested that people are only capable of constructing thoughts for which they possess actual words;This idea, known as linguistic determinism, was largely abandoned by the 1970s, but the Pirahã have put it back on the table
答案：a comparison with another language group
原文定位：The Waripiri language - spoken by a group of Australian Aborigines - like that of the Pirahã, features only the most rudimentary system of counting. However, the Waripiri people had no difficulty counting further than three in a foreign language;but when Everett attempted to teach the Pirahã how to count in Portuguese... not one of them managed to learn
答案：challenging a universal theory of language
原文定位：One of the most prominent critics is the linguist Noam Chomsky, who proposes that all human languages share a "universal grammar" - a basic, innate set of grammatical rules hardwired into the human brain. From this perspective, the Pirahã language cannot be an exception. Critics suggest that the Pirahã's inability to learn to count is a cultural choice, not a cognitive limitation imposed by their language
答案：NO
原文定位：Indeed, he was uncertain for so long about what he was actually hearing while living among the Pirahã that he waited nearly three decades before publishing his findings
答案：NO
原文定位：Most of all, it may be unique for not employing subordinate clauses
答案：NO
原文定位：Even after eight months of one-on-one tutoring, the Pirahã could not consistently get the answers right for simple sums they had successfully completed just the day before
答案：YES
原文定位：Critics suggest that the Pirahã's inability to learn to count is a cultural choice, not a cognitive limitation imposed by their language. They argue that the Pirahã place a high cultural value on living in the present and discussing only direct, personal experience, which may render abstract concepts like numbers unnecessary
答案：D subordinate clauses
原文定位：Most of all, it may be unique for not employing subordinate clauses;Equally perplexing, the Pirahã appear not to use numbers
答案：C linguistic determinism
原文定位：This idea, known as linguistic determinism, was largely abandoned by the 1970s, but the Pirahã have put it back on the table
答案：B universal grammar
原文定位：One of the most prominent critics is the linguist Noam Chomsky, who proposes that all human languages share a "universal grammar"-a basic, innate set of grammatical rules hardwired into the human brain
答案：A cultural choice
原文定位：Critics suggest that the Pirahã's inability to learn to count is a cultural choice, not a cognitive limitation imposed by their language