2012年研究生入学考试英语（一）翻译部分全文译文
Universal Truths
普遍真理
薛海滨 译
译者注：本文选自英国《自然》杂志（原文详见www.nature/nature/journal/v472/n7342/full/472136a.html），2012年研究生考试中，出题人对原文的某些字句进行了改编。在此，译者翻译的是没有经过改编的原版文章。
Since at least the days of Aristotle, a search for universal principles has characterized the scientific enterprise. In some ways, this quest for commonalities defines science: without it, there is no underlying order and pattern, merely as many explanations as there are things in the world. Newton's laws of motion, the oxygen theory of combustion and Darwinian evolution each bind a host of different phenomena into a single explicatory framework.译文翻译
至少是从亚里士多德时代开始，科学探索的主要特点是寻求普遍规律。从某种程度上讲，科学就是探索共性：没有共性的探究，就无从发现科学的基本规律和模式，其结果是有多少种事物，就有多少种解释。无论是牛顿的运动定律，还是燃烧氧化学说，还是达尔文的进化论，无不是汇不同的现象于统一的解释。
（46）In physics, one approach takes this impulse for unification to its extreme, and seeks a theory of everything — a single generative equation for all we see. It is becoming less clear, however, that such a theory would be a simplification, given the proliferation of dimensions and universes that it might entail. Nonetheless, unification of sorts remains a major goal.
物理学中，有一种方法将这种对统一性的紧迫需求发挥到了极致，追求一种具有普遍意义的理论，即为我们所见之物寻求一种单一的生成公式。可是，由于宇宙和空间维度有扩散性特点，该理论是否有简化之嫌，就不太清楚了。即便如此，对多元事物寻求统一解释依然是科学研究的主要目标。
This tendency in the natural sciences has long been evident in the social sciences too.（47）
Here, Darwinism seems to offer justification, for if all humans share common origins, it seems reasonable to suppose that cultural diversity could also be traced to more constrained beginnings. Just as the bewildering variety of human courtship rituals might all be considered to be forms of sexual selection, perhaps the world's languages, music, social and religious customs and even history are governed by universal features. （48）To filter out what is contingent and unique from what is shared might enable us to understand how complex cultural behaviour arose and what guides it in evolutionary or cognitive terms.
自然科学如此，社会科学也早就如此。在此，达尔文主义似乎给出了合理化的解释，这是因为如果整个人类有相同的起源，那么我们就有理由认为，文化的多样性同样也可以追溯到更为具体的开端。正如人类多种多样的恋爱形式可能是性选择行为的不同表现形式一样，或许世界上的语言、音乐、社会习俗、宗教习俗，乃至历史，也有普遍的特征。从共性中过滤出独特性，我们就可以明白文化行为起源的复杂性，以及文化行为在进化方面和认知方面的源动力。
That, at least, is the hope. But a comparative study of linguistic traits published online today (M. Dunn et al. Nature doi:10.1038/nature09923; 2011) supplies a reality check. Russell Gray at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, and his colleagues consider the evolution of grammars in the light of two previous attempts to find universality in language.
至少，这是我们的希望。但今日网上出版的一项语言特征对比研究（M·邓恩等，Nature doi:10.1038/nature09923; 2011）为其提供了现实依据。新西兰奥克兰大学的鲁塞尔·格雷和他的同事们正根据以前的两项研究成果考虑语法演进的问题，以期到语言上的统一性。
The most famous of these efforts was initiated by Noam Chomsky, who postulated that humans are born with an innate language-acquisition capacity — a brain module or modules specialized for language — that dictates a universal grammar. A few generative rules are then sufficient to unfold the entire fundamental structure of a language, which is why children can learn it so quickly. Languages would diversify through changes to the 'parameter settings' of the generative rules.
致力于该项研究的最知名人士是其发起人诺姆·乔姆斯基，他提出，人天生具有内在语言习得
机能——大脑中有专门的语言分区——来产生一种普遍语法，那么，几个语法生成规则就足以破解一门语言最基本的结构，因此，儿童时期语言学起来会很快。通过改变生成规则的“参数”，语言就会变得多元化。
（49）The second, by Joshua Greenberg, takes a more empirical approach to universality, identifying traits (particularly in word order) shared by many languages, which are considered to represent biases that result from cognitive constraints. Chomsky's and Greenberg's are not the only theories on the table for how languages evolve, but they make the strongest predictions about universals.
第二个为此做出努力的人是约书亚·格林伯格，他采用经验主义的方法来研究普遍性，确认多种语言（尤其是语序方面的）共同特征，这些特征被认为是体现了由于认知局限性而带来的偏见。乔姆斯基和格林伯格的理论讨论的不仅仅是语言的演进模式，而且要对语言的统一性提出最有力的预测。
Gray and his colleagues have put them to the test using phylogenetic methods to examine four family trees that between them represent more than 2,000 languages. （50）A genera
tive grammar should show patterns of language change that are independent of the family tree or the pathway tracked through it, whereas Greenbergian universality predicts strong co-dependencies between particular types of word-order relations (and not others). Neither of these patterns is borne out by the analysis, suggesting that the structures of the languages are lineage-specific and not governed by universals.
格雷和他的同事将这些理论付诸检验，他们采用了系统发育法，来考查代表2000余种语言的四种树型结构图。乔姆斯基的生成语法体现了与树型结构及其间路径不相关的语言变化模式，而格林伯格的普遍性理论则预见了各种类型的语序关系（而非其他关系）中存在强烈的相互依存性。
This does not mean that cognitive constraints are irrelevant, or that there are no other universals dictated by communication efficiency. It is surely inevitable that cognition sets limits on, say, word length. But such 'universals' seem likely to be relatively trivial features of languages, just as may be the case for putative universals in music and other aspects of culture.
这并不意味着认知制约因素与此毫不相干，或者说，有效的交流不需要其它的普遍性原则。认知对语言长度等方面的约束力是不言而喻的，但这种“普遍性”对语言来说，可能只算得上是相对微不足道的特征，就像音乐以及其他文化层面中那些假定的普遍性原则一样。
The conclusion? We should perhaps learn the lesson of Darwinism: a 'universal' mechanism of adaptation says little in itself about how a particular feature got to be the way it is, or about how it works. This truth has dawned on physicists too: universal equations are all very well, but the world actually consists of particular solutions, and these are generally the result of contingent history. One size does not always fit all.