TED2007
Murray Gell-Mann: The ancestor of language
Murray Gell-Mann o prajęzyku
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Po odczycie o estetyce fizyki na konferencji TED2007, nadzwyczajny Murray Gell-Mann opowiada pokrótce o swojej innej pasji: poszukiwaniu wspólnego praprzodka dzisiejszych języków.
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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Poza fizyką zajmuję się też innymi rzeczami.
00:17
In fact, mostly now in other things.
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Teraz nawet głównie innymi rzeczami.
00:19
One thing is distant relationships among human languages.
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Jedna z nich to dalekie pokrewieństwa między ludzkimi językami.
00:24
And the professional, historical linguists in the U.S.
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Zawodowi językoznawcy diachroniczni w USA
00:28
and in Western Europe mostly try to stay away
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i w Europie Zachodniej zwykle starają się unikać
00:31
from any long-distance relationships, big groupings,
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odległych związków, dużych grup,
00:35
groupings that go back a long time,
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których korzenie sięgają o wiele dalej
00:38
longer than the familiar families.
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niż te znanych rodzin języków.
00:41
They don't like that. They think it's crank. I don't think it's crank.
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Nie lubią tego. Myślą, że to poroniony pomysł. Ja tak nie uważam.
00:45
And there are some brilliant linguists, mostly Russians,
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Są pewni znakomici lingwiści, głównie Rosjanie,
00:48
who are working on that, at Santa Fe Institute and in Moscow,
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którzy pracują nad tym w Instytucie Santa Fe i w Moskwie,
00:52
and I would love to see where that leads.
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i ciekaw jestem, co z tego wyniknie.
00:56
Does it really lead to a single ancestor
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Czy naprawdę istniał jeden wspólny przodek
00:59
some 20, 25,000 years ago?
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jakieś 20-25 tys. lat temu?
01:02
And what if we go back beyond that single ancestor,
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A co było jeszcze wcześniej,
01:05
when there was presumably a competition among many languages?
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kiedy przypuszczalnie rywalizowało ze sobą wiele języków?
01:09
How far back does that go? How far back does modern language go?
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Jak daleko sięgają korzenie dzisiejszego języka?
01:13
How many tens of thousands of years does it go back?
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Ile dziesiątek tysięcy lat wstecz?
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: Ma pan jakieś przeczucie, nadzieję, jaka jest odpowiedź?
01:19
Murray Gell-Mann: Well, I would guess that modern language must be older
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Murray Gell-Mann: Stawiam na to, że współczesny język
01:22
than the cave paintings and cave engravings and cave sculptures
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jest starszy niż jaskiniowe malowidła, ryty czy rzeźby,
01:26
and dance steps in the soft clay in the caves in Western Europe,
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niż odciski tańczących stóp w glinie, w jaskiniach Europy Zachodniej
01:31
in the Aurignacian Period some 35,000 years ago, or earlier.
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z okresu oryniackiego, sprzed ok. 35 tys. lat lub starsze.
01:37
I can't believe they did all those things and didn't also have a modern language.
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Nie wierzę, że mieliby tego dokonać bez współczesnego języka.
01:40
So, I would guess that the actual origin goes back at least that far and maybe further.
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Podejrzewam więc, że prawdziwy początek leży tam lub nawet wcześniej.
01:45
But that doesn't mean that all, or many, or most
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Choć nie znaczy to, że wszystkie czy większość
01:48
of today's attested languages couldn't descend perhaps
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znanych dziś języków nie mogłaby pochodzić
01:52
from one that's much younger than that, like say 20,000 years,
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od pewnego młodszego, powiedzmy sprzed 20 tys. lat.
01:56
or something of that kind. It's what we call a bottleneck.
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To efekt wąskiego gardła.
02:00
CA: Well, Philip Anderson may have been right.
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CA: Philip Anderson mógł mieć rację --
02:01
You may just know more about everything than anyone.
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być może wie pan o wszystkim więcej niż ktokolwiek inny.
02:04
So, it's been an honor. Thank you Murray Gell-Mann.
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To był zaszczyt. Dziękuję panu.
02:06
(Applause)
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(Brawa)
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