TED2007
Murray Gell-Mann: The ancestor of language
Murray Gell-Mann: À propos de l'ancêtre de la langue
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À la suite d'une présentation au sujet de l'élégance en physique lors de la conférence TED2007, l'incroyable Murray Gell-Man nous donne un bref aperçu d'un autre thème qui le passionne autant: trouver l'ancêtre qui relierait nos langues 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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Eh bien, je suis impliqué dans bien d'autres choses à l'extérieur du domaine de la physique.
00:17
In fact, mostly now in other things.
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En fait, maintenant c'est surtout à d'autres choses que je m'intéresse.
00:19
One thing is distant relationships among human languages.
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Une de ces choses est l'existence de rapports lointains parmi les langues humaines.
00:24
And the professional, historical linguists in the U.S.
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Les professionnels de la linguistique historique aux États-Unis
00:28
and in Western Europe mostly try to stay away
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et en Europe de l'Ouest tentent surtout de se tenir à l'écart
00:31
from any long-distance relationships, big groupings,
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des rapports lointains entre les langues; par regroupements,
00:35
groupings that go back a long time,
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par regroupements qui remontent à un passé lointain,
00:38
longer than the familiar families.
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plus éloigné que celui des familles de langues qui nous sont familières.
00:41
They don't like that. They think it's crank. I don't think it's crank.
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Ils n'aiment pas ça; ils croient que c'est de la folie. Moi, je ne crois pas que ce soit de la folie.
00:45
And there are some brilliant linguists, mostly Russians,
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Il y a de brillants linguistes, surtout des Russes,
00:48
who are working on that, at Santa Fe Institute and in Moscow,
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qui travaillent sur ce sujet à l'Institut Santa Fe et à Moscou,
00:52
and I would love to see where that leads.
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et j'aimerais bien voir ce qui en découlera.
00:56
Does it really lead to a single ancestor
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Est-ce que ça nous mène à un seul ancêtre
00:59
some 20, 25,000 years ago?
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qui existait il y a 20 000 ou 25 000 annnées?
01:02
And what if we go back beyond that single ancestor,
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Et si nous retournions plus loin dans le passé, avant cet ancêtre,
01:05
when there was presumably a competition among many languages?
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alors qu'il y avait vraisemblablement une compétition entre différentes langues?
01:09
How far back does that go? How far back does modern language go?
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À combien de temps ceci remonte-t-il? Le langage moderne a fait surface à quelle époque?
01:13
How many tens of thousands of years does it go back?
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Depuis combien de dizaines de milliers d'années existe-t-il?
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: Avez-vous une intuition ou l'espoir de trouver la réponse à cette question?
01:19
Murray Gell-Mann: Well, I would guess that modern language must be older
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Murray Gell-Mann: Bien, je suppose que le langage moderne doit être plus ancien
01:22
than the cave paintings and cave engravings and cave sculptures
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que les peintures dans les cavernes, les gravures des cavernes, les sculptures des cavernes
01:26
and dance steps in the soft clay in the caves in Western Europe,
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et les empreintes de pas de danse dans les sols des cavernes de l'Europe de l'Ouest
01:31
in the Aurignacian Period some 35,000 years ago, or earlier.
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à la période aurignacienne, il y a 35 000 ans, ou avant.
01:37
I can't believe they did all those things and didn't also have a modern language.
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Je ne peux pas croire qu'ils aient accompli toutes ces choses sans avoir eu un langage moderne.
01:40
So, I would guess that the actual origin goes back at least that far and maybe further.
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Alors je suppose que la véritable origine remonte à au moins cette période et peut-être même plus loin.
01:45
But that doesn't mean that all, or many, or most
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Mais ceci ne veut pas dire que tout, ou plusieurs, ou même la plupart
01:48
of today's attested languages couldn't descend perhaps
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des langues parlées aujourd'hui ne seraient pas possiblement issues
01:52
from one that's much younger than that, like say 20,000 years,
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d'une langue plus récente que cela, qui existe depuis 20 000 ans
01:56
or something of that kind. It's what we call a bottleneck.
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ou quelque chose dans ce genre. C'est ce que nous appelons un "rétrécissement", comme le goulot d'une bouteille.
02:00
CA: Well, Philip Anderson may have been right.
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CA: Eh bien, Philip Anderson a peut-être eu raison.
02:01
You may just know more about everything than anyone.
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Vous avez sans doute plus de connaissances sur n'importe quel sujet que n'importe qui.
02:04
So, it's been an honor. Thank you Murray Gell-Mann.
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Ce fut un honneur de vous recevoir. Merci Murray Gell-Mann.
02:06
(Applause)
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(Applaudissements)
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