TED2007
Murray Gell-Mann: The ancestor of language
Murray Gell-Mann parla de l'ancestre del llenguatge
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Després de parlar a TED2007 sobre l'elegància de la física, el sorprenent Murray Gell-Man ens dóna una ràpida visió d'un altre tema que l'apassiona: trobar l'ancestre comú de les llengües modernes.
Murray Gell-Mann - Physicist
Murray Gell-Mann brings visibility to a crucial aspect of our existence that we can't actually see: elemental particles. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics for introducing quarks, one of two fundamental ingredients for all matter in the universe. Full bio
Murray Gell-Mann brings visibility to a crucial aspect of our existence that we can't actually see: elemental particles. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics for introducing quarks, one of two fundamental ingredients for all matter in the universe. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
00:13
Well, I'm involved in other things, besides physics.
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Bé, em dedico a altres coses a part de la física;
00:17
In fact, mostly now in other things.
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En realitat, ara em dedico més aviat a altres coses.
00:19
One thing is distant relationships among human languages.
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Una d’elles és les relacions llunyanes entre les llengües humanes.
00:24
And the professional, historical linguists in the U.S.
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I els professionals de la lingüística històrica dels Estats Units
00:28
and in Western Europe mostly try to stay away
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i de l’Europa Occidental eviten, sempre que poden,
00:31
from any long-distance relationships, big groupings,
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qualsevol relació llunyana; els grans grups,
00:35
groupings that go back a long time,
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els grups que es remunten molt lluny en el temps,
00:38
longer than the familiar families.
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més enllà de les famílies que ens són familiars.
00:41
They don't like that. They think it's crank. I don't think it's crank.
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No els agrada això: els sembla excèntric. A mi no m’ho sembla!
00:45
And there are some brilliant linguists, mostly Russians,
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Hi ha alguns lingüistes brillants, sobretot russos,
00:48
who are working on that, at Santa Fe Institute and in Moscow,
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que es dediquen a això al Santa Fe Institute i a Moscou,
00:52
and I would love to see where that leads.
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i m’encantaria veure on ens porta això.
00:56
Does it really lead to a single ancestor
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Ens porta realment a un ancestre únic
00:59
some 20, 25,000 years ago?
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de fa 20 o 25.000 anys?
01:02
And what if we go back beyond that single ancestor,
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I si ens remuntem més enllà d’aquest ancestre únic,
01:05
when there was presumably a competition among many languages?
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quan és de suposar que moltes llengües competissin entre si?
01:09
How far back does that go? How far back does modern language go?
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A quan es remunta això? A quan es remunta el llenguatge modern?
01:13
How many tens of thousands of years does it go back?
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Quantes desenes de milers d’anys enrere?
01:16
Chris Anderson: Do you have a hunch or a hope for what the answer to that is?
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Chris Anderson: Té alguna intuïció o esperança de quina pot ser la resposta a aquestes preguntes?
01:19
Murray Gell-Mann: Well, I would guess that modern language must be older
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Murray Gell-Mann: Jo diria que el llenguatge modern ha de ser més antic
01:22
than the cave paintings and cave engravings and cave sculptures
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que les pintures, relleus i escultures rupestres
01:26
and dance steps in the soft clay in the caves in Western Europe,
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i que les empremtes de passos de ball en argila de les coves de l’Europa Occidental
01:31
in the Aurignacian Period some 35,000 years ago, or earlier.
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del període Aurinyacià, fa 35.000 anys, o abans i tot.
01:37
I can't believe they did all those things and didn't also have a modern language.
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Em costa creure que fessin totes aquestes coses i no tinguessin també un llenguatge modern.
01:40
So, I would guess that the actual origin goes back at least that far and maybe further.
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Així que jo diria que l'origen es remunta almenys fins aquest període i potser més enrere.
01:45
But that doesn't mean that all, or many, or most
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Però això no implica que totes, o moltes, o la majoria
01:48
of today's attested languages couldn't descend perhaps
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de les llengües reconegudes avui dia no puguin procedir
01:52
from one that's much younger than that, like say 20,000 years,
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d’una que sigui molt més recent que això, d’uns 20.000 anys,
01:56
or something of that kind. It's what we call a bottleneck.
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o alguna cosa així. És el que anomenem un coll d’ampolla.
02:00
CA: Well, Philip Anderson may have been right.
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C.A.: Bé, pot ser que Philip Anderson tingués raó.
02:01
You may just know more about everything than anyone.
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És possible que de qualsevol tema en sàpiga vostè més que ningú.
02:04
So, it's been an honor. Thank you Murray Gell-Mann.
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Ha estat un honor! Gràcies, Murray Gell-Mann.
02:06
(Applause)
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(aplaudiments).
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Murray Gell-Mann - PhysicistMurray Gell-Mann brings visibility to a crucial aspect of our existence that we can't actually see: elemental particles. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics for introducing quarks, one of two fundamental ingredients for all matter in the universe.
Why you should listen
He's been called "the man with five brains" -- and Murray Gell-Mann has the resume to prove it. In addition to being a Nobel laureate, he is an accomplished physicist who's earned numerous awards, medals and honorary degrees for his work with subatomic particles, including the groundbreaking theory that the nucleus of an atom comprises 100 or so fundamental building blocks called quarks.
Gell-Mann's influence extends well beyond his field: He's a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Council on Foreign Relations. He also serves on the board of the Wildlife Conservation Society and is a director of Encyclopedia Britannica. Gell-Mann, a professor emeritus of Caltech, now heads the evolution of human languages program at the Santa Fe Institute, which he cofounded in 1984.
A prolific writer -- he's penned scores of academic papers and several books, including The Quark and the Jaguar -- Gell-Mann is also the subject of the popular science biography Strange Beauty: Murray Gell-Mann and the Revolution in 20th-Century Physics.
Murray Gell-Mann | Speaker | TED.com