(本文约1800字,请花4分钟来阅读。)
(请参考本系列前四篇。) 每个单词或者词组,我会举两个例句。一个例句来自日常用语,较简单。另一个例句来自我读过的学术论文或者专著,较复杂。后者我会注明出处。
可取代词汇: prominent
用法: fore作名词就是“前面”的意思,你只要想着before是什么意思,一下就可以记住。这个词组常和come和bring在一起使用,搭配为something come to the fore和something brings something else to the fore。字面意思就是“来到前面”,引申出来就是“凸显出来”。在学术语体里,“走向前台”的往往是problem, issue, question, idea等。
例句: A number of low-budget independent films brought new directors and actors to the fore . 许多低预算的独立电影使一些新的导演和演员们 崭露头角 。 The cognitive revolution was largely a normative anti-behaviorist counter-revolution, whose inspiring legacy was to bring to the fore the importance of cross-disciplinary collaboration. (Nunez et al, 2019, p. 789) 认知革命很大程度上是标准的反行为主义的“反革命”,它振奋人心的遗产是把跨学科合作的重要性 凸显了出来 。
可取代词汇: relevant
用法: 其实pertinent和relevant都是典型学术词汇。有意思的是,如果你去查“中肯”的英文,大概率看到的是relevant,但是以我的理解,pertinent的意思更接近我们中文的“中肯”。和pertinent搭配的名词常见的有:information, issue, suggestion, question等。和relevant一样,pertinent最常用的搭配是A is pertinent to B。
例句: She had asked some pertinent questions . 她问了一些 相关的问题 。 This area (left parietal cortex), generally assumed to be pertinent to auditory and articulatory aspects, is believed to sub-serve phonological working memory as well. (Wen, Biedroń & Skehan, 2016, p. 14) 这个一般被认为和听觉及关节有关的区域(左侧顶叶皮层),据信也对语音工作记忆有帮助。
可取代词汇: inevitably, inescapably
用法: variable就是“可变的”,在论文里面经常是“变量”的意思。in-是个前缀,加上就变成的“不可变的”,然后加个副词后缀-ly,invariably就诞生了。在学术语体里,我们使用invariably表示一个情况总是发生,常常跟着almost后面。
例句: They almost invariably get it wrong. 他们几乎总是将它弄错。 Lastly, the researchers observed that children almost invariably failed to reproduce genitive relative clauses, despite a very short distance between filler and gap. (Hilpert, 2005, p. 175) 最后,研究者们观察到儿童几乎毫无例外地无法产出属格关系从句,哪怕filler和gap之间的距离很短。
可取代词汇: usually
用法: 我记得我有一位导师很喜欢用这个词。我为什么要说我有一位导师呢,因为读博到现在,我已经有四个导师了,四个,四个哦。国外大学教师流动性大,没有办法。很显然,这个词组不简洁,但高级啊,在高级感面前,简洁也得让位。开个玩笑了,文章还是贵在简洁,不过这是一个固定搭配,不存在简洁不简洁的问题。
例句: For instance, if you fail an exam, more often than not the reason might be found in your study habits (or lack thereof). 举个例子,假如你考试没通过,究其原因 通常 是由于你的学习习惯(或缺乏好的习惯)。 More often than not , the overall textmatching percentages yielded by the computer programs were interpreted simplistically and unproblematically as evidence of plagiarism. (Hu & Sun, 2017, p. 65) 计算机程序返回的总体文本匹配百分比 通常 会被简单不加怀疑地解读为抄袭的证据。
可取代词汇: replacing
用法: lieu是一个比较生僻的词,在我印象中,好像除了这个词组,也没有什么别的用法。注意in lieu of是一个介词词组,通常在句子中作状语。
例句: In lieu of an answer, she just pointed. 她 没有 回答,只是指了指。
Thus, in the following sentences, relative and coordinate clauses are used several times in lieu of specifically causative constructions. (Talmy, 2000, p. 514) 因此,在下面的句子里,关系从句和并列分句被多次使用,以代替专门的使役动词结构。
References Hilpert, M. (2014). Construction grammar and its application to English . Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Hu, G., & Sun, X. (2017). Institutional policies on plagiarism: The case of eight Chinese universities of foreign languages/international studies. System, 66 , 56-68. doi: Nunez, R., Allen, M., Gao, R., Miller Rigoli, C., Relaford-Doyle, J., & Semenuks, A. (2019). What happened to cognitive science? Nat Hum Behav, 3 (8), 782-791. doi:10.1038/s41562-019-0626-2 Talmy, L. (2000). Toward a cognitive semantics Volume I: Concept structuring system (Vol. 1) . Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT press. Wen, Z., Biedroń, A., & Skehan, P. (2016). Foreign language aptitude theory: Yesterday, today and tomorrow. Language Teaching, 50 (1), 1-31. doi:10.1017/s0261444816000276