2004年考研英语英译汉试题原文：

The relation of language and mind has interested philosophers for many centuries. (61) The Greeks assumed that the structure of language had some connection with the process of thought, which took root in Europe long before people realized how diverse language could be.
　　Only recently did linguists begin the serious study of languages that were very different from their own. Two anthropologist-linguists, Franz Boas and Edward Sapir, were pioneers in describing many native languages of North and South America during the first half of the twentieth century. (62) We are obliged to them because some of these languages have since vanished, as the peoples who spoke them died out or became assimilated and lost their native languages. Other linguists in the earlier part of this century, however, who were less eager to deal with bizarre(古怪的) data from "exotic（外来的）" language, were not always so grateful. (63) The newly described languages were often so strikingly different from the well studied languages of Europe and Southeast Asia that some scholars even accused Boas and Sapir of fabricating their data. Native American languages are indeed different, so much so in fact that Navajo could be used by the US military as a code during World War II to send secret messages.
　　Sapir's pupil, Benjamin Lee Whorf, continued the study of American Indian languages. (64) Being interested in the relationship of language and thought, Whorf developed the idea that the structure of language determines the structure of habitual thought in a society. He reasoned that because it is easier to formulate certain concepts and not others in a given language, the speakers of that language think along one track and not along another. (65) Whorf came to believe in a sort of linguistic determinism which, in its strongest form, states that language imprisons the mind, and that the grammatical patterns in a language can produce far-reaching consequences for the culture of a society. Later, this idea became to be known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis（假说）, but this term is somewhat inappropriate. Although both Sapir and Whorf emphasized the diversity of languages, Sapir himself never explicitly supported the notion of linguistic determinism.

此文讨论的是为什么哲学家长期以来对语言与思维的关系很感兴趣。开篇即指出，早在古希腊，人们就认识到语言与思维有关联，而将语言研究用于不同的语言上，则是近代的事。文中以20世纪上半叶的两个著名人类学家、语言学家Franz Boas 和Edward Sapir为例，指出他们对人类语言研究方面做出的贡献。文中的另一重要人物是Sapir 的学生Benjamin Lee Whorf，他通过分析部落语言的兴衰证明了语言与文化的不可分割性，提出了Sapir-Whorf假说。下面我们对5个划线句的翻译分别给出具体的分析解答过程。

(61) The Greeks assumed that the structure of language had some connection with the process of thought, which took root in Europe long before people realized how diverse language could be.
　　解析
　　这是一个带宾语从句，定语从句的复合句，其框架结构分析如下：