TED2007
Murray Gell-Mann: The ancestor of language
Murray Gell-Mann sulle origini del linguaggio umano
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Dopo aver parlato dell'eleganza nella fisica al TED2007, il grande Murray Gell-Mann ci offre un riassunto veloce di un altro suo interesse: cercare un antenato comune delle nostre lingue moderne.
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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Per cominciare, sono coinvolto in altre cose oltre alla fisica
00:17
In fact, mostly now in other things.
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Infatti, adesso mi occupo per lo più di altre cose
00:19
One thing is distant relationships among human languages.
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Una di queste e' il rapporto distante che esiste fra le varie lingue.
00:24
And the professional, historical linguists in the U.S.
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I linguisti storici, i professionisti negli Stati Uniti
00:28
and in Western Europe mostly try to stay away
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e nell'Europa occidentale di solito cercano di stare lontano
00:31
from any long-distance relationships, big groupings,
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da qualsiasi rapporto di lunga distanza; grandi raggruppamenti,
00:35
groupings that go back a long time,
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gruppi che risalgono ad un tempo antico,
00:38
longer than the familiar families.
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piu' antiche delle famiglie linguistiche che noi conosciamo.
00:41
They don't like that. They think it's crank. I don't think it's crank.
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A loro non piace; pensano che sia follia. Io non penso sia follia.
00:45
And there are some brilliant linguists, mostly Russians,
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E poi ci sono dei linguisti brillanti, per la maggior parte Russi,
00:48
who are working on that, at Santa Fe Institute and in Moscow,
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che stanno lavorando su questo all'instituto di Santa Fe e anche a Mosca,
00:52
and I would love to see where that leads.
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Mi piacerebbe vedere dove portera' questa ricerca.
00:56
Does it really lead to a single ancestor
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Ci conduce veramente ad un singolo antenato che esisteva
00:59
some 20, 25,000 years ago?
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circa 20-25,000 anni fa?
01:02
And what if we go back beyond that single ancestor,
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E se andassimo oltre questo singolo antenato,
01:05
when there was presumably a competition among many languages?
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quando presumibilmente c'era competizione tra varie lingue?
01:09
How far back does that go? How far back does modern language go?
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Quanto dovremmo andare indietro? A quale periodo risale la lingua moderna?
01:13
How many tens of thousands of years does it go back?
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Quante decine di migliaia di anni dovremmo risalire?
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: Ha un presentimento o un auspicio riguardo la risposta a questa domanda?
01:19
Murray Gell-Mann: Well, I would guess that modern language must be older
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Murray Gell-Mann: Dunque, io posso ipotizzare che la lingua moderna risalga ad un tempo
01:22
than the cave paintings and cave engravings and cave sculptures
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piu' antico delle pitture, incisioni e sculture nelle caverne
01:26
and dance steps in the soft clay in the caves in Western Europe,
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e i passi di danza fatte sul terreno soffice nelle caverne dell'Europa occidentale
01:31
in the Aurignacian Period some 35,000 years ago, or earlier.
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nel periodo Aurignaziano, circa 35,000 anni fa, o anche prima.
01:37
I can't believe they did all those things and didn't also have a modern language.
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Non posso credere che hanno fatto tutte quelle cose e non avessero anche una lingua moderna.
01:40
So, I would guess that the actual origin goes back at least that far and maybe further.
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Quindi posso supporre che l'origine vera risalga almeno a questa eta' e forse anche prima.
01:45
But that doesn't mean that all, or many, or most
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Questo non vuol dire che tutte, o tante, o la maggioranza
01:48
of today's attested languages couldn't descend perhaps
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delle lingue d'oggi non siano derivanti
01:52
from one that's much younger than that, like say 20,000 years,
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da una lingua che sia piu' recente di quell'altra, forse 20,000 anni fa,
01:56
or something of that kind. It's what we call a bottleneck.
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Questo e' quello che noi chiamiamo effetto a collo di bottiglia.
02:00
CA: Well, Philip Anderson may have been right.
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CA: Beh, Philip Anderson puo' aver avuto ragione
02:01
You may just know more about everything than anyone.
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Lei e’ probabilmente la persona che sa piu’ cose su qualsiasi materia di qualsiasi altra persona.
02:04
So, it's been an honor. Thank you Murray Gell-Mann.
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E' stato un onore. Grazie al sig. Murray Gell-Mann.
02:06
(Applause)
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(Applauso)
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