TED2007
Murray Gell-Mann: The ancestor of language
Murray Gell-Mann fala sobre a origem das línguas
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Depois de palestrar na TED2007 sobre a elegancia na física, o fantástico Murray Gell-Mann nos dá um rápido panorama sobre outro tema apaixonante: a busca do ancestral comum às línguas 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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Bem, eu também estou envolvido em outros assuntos além da física.
00:17
In fact, mostly now in other things.
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De fato, agora, basicamente mais em outros assuntos.
00:19
One thing is distant relationships among human languages.
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Um deles é sobre as distantes relações entre linguagens humanas.
00:24
And the professional, historical linguists in the U.S.
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E os lingüistas históricos profissionais nos EUA
00:28
and in Western Europe mostly try to stay away
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e na Europa Ocidental, em grande parte, mantém distância
00:31
from any long-distance relationships, big groupings,
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de quaisquer das relações distantes; grandes grupos,
00:35
groupings that go back a long time,
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ramos de idiomas que se conectam desde longínquos tempos,
00:38
longer than the familiar families.
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mais longínquos do que as famílias propriamente ditas.
00:41
They don't like that. They think it's crank. I don't think it's crank.
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Eles não gostam disso; eles consideram o assunto obscuro. Eu não o acho obscuro.
00:45
And there are some brilliant linguists, mostly Russians,
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E existem lingüistas brilhantes, principalmente os russos,
00:48
who are working on that, at Santa Fe Institute and in Moscow,
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que estão trabalhando com este tema no Instituto Santa Fé e em Moscou.
00:52
and I would love to see where that leads.
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e eu adodaria saber onde isto nos levará.
00:56
Does it really lead to a single ancestor
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Será que realmente nos leva a um único ancestral
00:59
some 20, 25,000 years ago?
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cerca de 20, 25.000 anos atrás?
01:02
And what if we go back beyond that single ancestor,
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E o quê se dirá, então, se voltarmos no tempo além deste ponto,
01:05
when there was presumably a competition among many languages?
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quando se presume ter havido uma competição entre muitos idiomas?
01:09
How far back does that go? How far back does modern language go?
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Até quando se tem que regressar no tempo para isso?
01:13
How many tens of thousands of years does it go back?
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A quantas dezenas de milênios atrás?
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: O senhor tem alguma idéia ou esperança quanto à resposta a esta pergunta?
01:19
Murray Gell-Mann: Well, I would guess that modern language must be older
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Murray Gell-Mann: Bom, eu imaginaria que a linguagem moderna deva ser mais antiga
01:22
than the cave paintings and cave engravings and cave sculptures
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do que as pinturas, entalhes e esculturas das cavernas,
01:26
and dance steps in the soft clay in the caves in Western Europe,
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do que os passos de dança marcados no barro das cavernas da Europa Ocidental
01:31
in the Aurignacian Period some 35,000 years ago, or earlier.
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no período Aurignácio cerca de 35.000 anos atrás, ou antes.
01:37
I can't believe they did all those things and didn't also have a modern language.
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Não posso crer que eles fizeram todas estas coisas e não tiveram também uma língua moderna.
01:40
So, I would guess that the actual origin goes back at least that far and maybe further.
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Então eu estimaria que a verdadeira origem seja tão antiga quanto isso, ou talvez mais.
01:45
But that doesn't mean that all, or many, or most
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Mas isso não significa que todas, ou muitas, ou a maioria
01:48
of today's attested languages couldn't descend perhaps
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das línguas testadas até hoje não descendam, talvez,
01:52
from one that's much younger than that, like say 20,000 years,
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de alguma outra que seja muito mais nova do que isto, por exemplo, 20.000 anos,
01:56
or something of that kind. It's what we call a bottleneck.
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ou algo nesse estilo. É o que chamamos de gargalo.
02:00
CA: Well, Philip Anderson may have been right.
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CA: Bom, pode ser que Philip Anderson tenha estado certo.
02:01
You may just know more about everything than anyone.
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Pode ser que você saiba mais sobre as coisas do que todos.
02:04
So, it's been an honor. Thank you Murray Gell-Mann.
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Então, foi uma honra. Obrigado 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