TED2007
Murray Gell-Mann: The ancestor of language
Murray Gell-Mann: sobre los antepasados del lenguaje
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Después de hablar en TED2007 sobre la elegancia de la física, el increíble Murray Gell-Mann da una breve visión general de otra de sus pasiones: la búsqueda del antepasado común de las lenguas modernas.
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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Bueno, me dedico a más cosas aparte de la física.
00:17
In fact, mostly now in other things.
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En realidad, ahora me dedico más bien a otras.
00:19
One thing is distant relationships among human languages.
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Una de ellas son las relaciones lejanas entre las lenguas humanas.
00:24
And the professional, historical linguists in the U.S.
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Los lingüistas históricos profesionales de Estados Unidos
00:28
and in Western Europe mostly try to stay away
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y de Europa Occidental evitan, en la medida de lo posible,
00:31
from any long-distance relationships, big groupings,
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las relaciones lejanas, los grandes grupos,
00:35
groupings that go back a long time,
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los grupos que se remontan mucho en el tiempo,
00:38
longer than the familiar families.
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más allá de las familias que son familiares.
00:41
They don't like that. They think it's crank. I don't think it's crank.
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No les gusta, les parece excéntrico. A mí no me parece.
00:45
And there are some brilliant linguists, mostly Russians,
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Hay algunos lingüistas geniales, sobre todo rusos,
00:48
who are working on that, at Santa Fe Institute and in Moscow,
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dedicándose a ello en el Instituto Santa Fe y en Moscú,
00:52
and I would love to see where that leads.
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y me encantaría ver dónde nos lleva esto.
00:56
Does it really lead to a single ancestor
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¿Nos lleva realmente a un antepasado único,
00:59
some 20, 25,000 years ago?
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de hace 20 o 25.000 años?
01:02
And what if we go back beyond that single ancestor,
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¿Y si nos remontamos más allá de ese antepasado único,
01:05
when there was presumably a competition among many languages?
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cuándo es de suponer que muchas lenguas compitieran entre sí?
01:09
How far back does that go? How far back does modern language go?
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¿Hasta cuándo se remonta eso? ¿Hasta cuándo se remonta el lenguaje moderno?
01:13
How many tens of thousands of years does it go back?
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¿Cuántas decenas de miles de años?
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: ¿Tiene alguna corazonada o esperanza sobre la respuesta?
01:19
Murray Gell-Mann: Well, I would guess that modern language must be older
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Murray Gell-Mann: yo diría que el lenguaje moderno tiene que ser anterior
01:22
than the cave paintings and cave engravings and cave sculptures
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a las pinturas, relieves y esculturas rupestres
01:26
and dance steps in the soft clay in the caves in Western Europe,
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y anterior a las pisadas de baile en el barro en las cuevas de Europa Occidental
01:31
in the Aurignacian Period some 35,000 years ago, or earlier.
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durante el período Auriñaciense, hace 35.000 años, o antes.
01:37
I can't believe they did all those things and didn't also have a modern language.
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Me cuesta creer que hicieran todo aquello y que no tuvieran un lenguaje moderno.
01:40
So, I would guess that the actual origin goes back at least that far and maybe further.
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Así que yo diría que el verdadero origen es así de antiguo o incluso más.
01:45
But that doesn't mean that all, or many, or most
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Pero eso no implica que todas, o muchas, o la mayoría
01:48
of today's attested languages couldn't descend perhaps
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de las lenguas reconocidas de hoy en día no puedan proceder
01:52
from one that's much younger than that, like say 20,000 years,
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de una misma, mucho más joven aún, 20.000 años, por ejemplo,
01:56
or something of that kind. It's what we call a bottleneck.
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o algo así. Es lo que se llama un cuello de botella.
02:00
CA: Well, Philip Anderson may have been right.
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CA: Bueno, puede que Philip Anderson tuviera razón.
02:01
You may just know more about everything than anyone.
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Es posible que de cualquier tema sepa usted más que nadie.
02:04
So, it's been an honor. Thank you Murray Gell-Mann.
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Ha sido un honor. Gracias, Murray Gell-Mann.
02:06
(Applause)
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(Aplausos)
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