By the way, in what I'm saying, I oversimplify by supposing that the basic unit of language is a word.

因为我想说的是，我们现在是把语言的基本单位简单化了。

耶鲁公开课 - 文学理论导论课程节选

The linguists know that that's not at all necessarily the case.

语言学家认为语言的基本单位不一定是词。

耶鲁公开课 - 文学理论导论课程节选

Why do we talk about them as the fundamental units?

我们为什么说细胞是基本单位呢

耶鲁公开课 - 生物医学工程探索课程节选

Sometimes the basic unit is the phrase, but some other times the basic unit is the phoneme or if one's studying language as a system of writing it might be the syllable.

有时候基本单位是一个词组，有时候则是一个音素,也就是在写作的研究中的,一个音节。

耶鲁公开课 - 文学理论导论课程节选

Because the cells are the fundamental component of our bodies; very interesting because all of our cells in our body share many characteristics and some of those characteristics are shown on this picture.

因为细胞是我们身体的基本构成单位,这非常有意思,因为我们身体里所有细胞,有许多共同的特征,而其中的一些特征展示在了这幅图中

耶鲁公开课 - 生物医学工程探索课程节选

I do want to talk about one important subject which you might not have thought too much about and that's lipids, because lipids are so important to the structure of the body because they make up the membranes that form the cells that are the fundamental units.

我的确想要讨论一个重要的主题,这个主题也许你们都没有深入思考过,那就是关于脂类的问题,脂类对身体结构形成十分重要,它是组成细胞膜的基本单位,而细胞膜能够维持细胞形态

耶鲁公开课 - 生物医学工程探索课程节选