TED2007
Murray Gell-Mann: The ancestor of language
Murray Gell-Mann om språkets stamfar
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Etter å ha snakket ved TED2007 om eleganse innen fysikk, så gir den utrolige Murray Gell-Mann et raskt overblikk om en annen lidenskap: å finne de moderne språkenes felles opphav.
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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Vel, jeg er involvert i andre ting enn fysikk.
00:17
In fact, mostly now in other things.
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Nå er det faktisk mest andre ting.
00:19
One thing is distant relationships among human languages.
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En ting er fjerne forbindelser mellom menneskepråk.
00:24
And the professional, historical linguists in the U.S.
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De profesjonelle språkforskerene i USA
00:28
and in Western Europe mostly try to stay away
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og i Vest-Europa prøver å holde seg unna
00:31
from any long-distance relationships, big groupings,
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disse langdistanse forholdene; store samlinger,
00:35
groupings that go back a long time,
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samlinger som går langt tilbake i tid,
00:38
longer than the familiar families.
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lenger enn kjente språkfamilier.
00:41
They don't like that. They think it's crank. I don't think it's crank.
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De tenker ikke slik; de tror det er for drøyt. Jeg tror ikke det er for drøyt.
00:45
And there are some brilliant linguists, mostly Russians,
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Og det er noen briljante språkforskere, mest russere,
00:48
who are working on that, at Santa Fe Institute and in Moscow,
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som jobber på Santa Fe Instituttet og i Moskva,
00:52
and I would love to see where that leads.
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og jeg vil gjerne se hva det leder til.
00:56
Does it really lead to a single ancestor
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Kommer det til å lede til en enkelt stamfar
00:59
some 20, 25,000 years ago?
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for sånn 20-25,000 år tilbake?
01:02
And what if we go back beyond that single ancestor,
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Og hva om det går tilbake før den stamfaren,
01:05
when there was presumably a competition among many languages?
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der det sikkert var konkurranse mellom forskjellige språk?
01:09
How far back does that go? How far back does modern language go?
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Hvor langt tilbake går det? Hvor langt tilbake går det moderne språk?
01:13
How many tens of thousands of years does it go back?
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Hvor mange titusener av år tilbake?
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: Har du en tanke eller et håp om hva svaret kan være?
01:19
Murray Gell-Mann: Well, I would guess that modern language must be older
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Murray Gell-Mann: Vel, jeg antar at det moderne språk er eldre
01:22
than the cave paintings and cave engravings and cave sculptures
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enn hulemalerier, graveringer, skulpturer,
01:26
and dance steps in the soft clay in the caves in Western Europe,
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og den myke leiren i Vest-Europeiske huler
01:31
in the Aurignacian Period some 35,000 years ago, or earlier.
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under den Aurignacianske perioden for 35,000 år siden, eller tidligere.
01:37
I can't believe they did all those things and didn't also have a modern language.
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Jeg kan ikke tro at de gjorde alle de tingene og ikke hadde et moderne språk.
01:40
So, I would guess that the actual origin goes back at least that far and maybe further.
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Så jeg antar at det går tilbake, kanskje enda lengre.
01:45
But that doesn't mean that all, or many, or most
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Men det betyr ikke at alle, eller mange, eller de fleste
01:48
of today's attested languages couldn't descend perhaps
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av dagens språk ikke kunne stamme
01:52
from one that's much younger than that, like say 20,000 years,
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fra et yngre enn det for omtrent 20,000 år,
01:56
or something of that kind. It's what we call a bottleneck.
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eller noe slikt. Det er det vi kaller en flaskehals.
02:00
CA: Well, Philip Anderson may have been right.
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CA: Vell, Phillip Anderson kan ha hatt rett.
02:01
You may just know more about everything than anyone.
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Du kan kansje mer om alt enn noen andre.
02:04
So, it's been an honor. Thank you Murray Gell-Mann.
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Så det har vært en ære. Takk til Murray Gell-Mann.
02:06
(Applause)
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(Applaus)
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