TED2007
Murray Gell-Mann: The ancestor of language
Murray Gell-Mann nos antepasados da linguaxe
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Despois de falar en TED2007 da elegancia da física, o sorprendente Murray Gell-Mann proporciónanos unha breve visión xeral sobre outra das súas paixóns: procurar o antepasado común das nosas linguas 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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Ben, ademais da física, estou enleado noutras cousas.
00:17
In fact, mostly now in other things.
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De feito, agora estou principalmente noutras cousas.
00:19
One thing is distant relationships among human languages.
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Unha delas é a relación distante entre as diferentes linguas humanas.
00:24
And the professional, historical linguists in the U.S.
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Os profesionais, lingüistas históricos nos EEUU
00:28
and in Western Europe mostly try to stay away
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e en Europa Occidental, tentan de maneira especial manterse lonxe
00:31
from any long-distance relationships, big groupings,
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de calquera relación afastada no tempo, das grandes agrupacións,
00:35
groupings that go back a long time,
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agrupacións que se remontan moito no tempo,
00:38
longer than the familiar families.
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moito máis cás familias familiares.
00:41
They don't like that. They think it's crank. I don't think it's crank.
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Eles non gustan disto, cren que son excentricidades. Eu non.
00:45
And there are some brilliant linguists, mostly Russians,
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E hai algúns lingüistas brillantes, a maioría rusos,
00:48
who are working on that, at Santa Fe Institute and in Moscow,
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que están a traballar nisto no Instituto de Santa Fe e en Moscú,
00:52
and I would love to see where that leads.
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e a min encantaríame ver a onde os leva.
00:56
Does it really lead to a single ancestor
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Lévanos realmente a un único antepasado
00:59
some 20, 25,000 years ago?
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de hai uns 20 ou 25 000 anos?
01:02
And what if we go back beyond that single ancestor,
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E que pasa se imos máis alá de este antepasado único,
01:05
when there was presumably a competition among many languages?
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cando imaxino que había unha competición entre moitas linguaxes?
01:09
How far back does that go? How far back does modern language go?
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Como de lonxe se remonta isto? Ata onde se remontan as linguas modernas?
01:13
How many tens of thousands of years does it go back?
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Cantas decenas de miles de anos?
01:16
Chris Anderson: Do you have a hunch or a hope for what the answer to that is?
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Vostede ten o presentimento ou a esperanza de cal é a resposta?
01:19
Murray Gell-Mann: Well, I would guess that modern language must be older
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Ben, supoño que as linguas modernas deben ser máis antigas
01:22
than the cave paintings and cave engravings and cave sculptures
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cás pinturas, os gravados e as esculturas das cavernas
01:26
and dance steps in the soft clay in the caves in Western Europe,
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e as pisadas de baile na lama das cavernas de Europa Occidental,
01:31
in the Aurignacian Period some 35,000 years ago, or earlier.
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no período Auriñacense hai uns 35 000 anos ou máis.
01:37
I can't believe they did all those things and didn't also have a modern language.
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Eu non podo crer que fixeran todas esas cousas e non tiveran xa unha linguaxe moderna.
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 eu diría que a verdadeira orixe se remonta polo menos ata ese momento e, se cadra, máis.
01:45
But that doesn't mean that all, or many, or most
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Pero isto non significa que todas, ou moitas, ou a maioría
01:48
of today's attested languages couldn't descend perhaps
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das linguas que se coñecen na actualidade non proveñan
01:52
from one that's much younger than that, like say 20,000 years,
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dunha moito máis nova ca iso, como de hai 20 000 anos,
01:56
or something of that kind. It's what we call a bottleneck.
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ou algo polo estilo. É o que chamamos unha conxestión.
02:00
CA: Well, Philip Anderson may have been right.
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Ben, pode que Philip Anderson tivese razón.
02:01
You may just know more about everything than anyone.
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Vostede debe saber máis de todo que ninguén.
02:04
So, it's been an honor. Thank you Murray Gell-Mann.
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Así que, foi todo un honor. Grazas 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