ABOUT THE SPEAKER
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.

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.

More profile about the speaker
Murray Gell-Mann | Speaker | TED.com
TED2007

Murray Gell-Mann: The ancestor of language

Murray Gell-Mann om opphavet til språk

Filmed:
944,446 views

Etter å ha talt på TED2007 om eleganse i fysikk gir den makelause Murray Gell-Mann eit raskt oversyn over ei anna interesse: søket etter eit felles opphav til våre moderne språk.
- 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

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, eg driv med andre ting i tillegg til fysikk.
00:17
In fact, mostly now in other things.
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Faktisk, hovudsakleg andre ting for tida.
00:19
One thing is distant relationships among human languages.
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Ein ting er fjerne slektskap mellom menneskelege språk.
00:24
And the professional, historical linguists in the U.S.
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Og profesjonelle, historiske lingvistar i USA
00:28
and in Western Europe mostly try to stay away
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og i Vest-Europa held seg helst unna
00:31
from any long-distance relationships, big groupings,
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slektskap over store avstandar; store grupperingar,
00:35
groupings that go back a long time,
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grupperingar som går langt attende i tid,
00:38
longer than the familiar families.
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lenger enn dei vanlege familiane.
00:41
They don't like that. They think it's crank. I don't think it's crank.
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Dei liker det ikkje; dei tykkjer det er vrøvl. Eg tykkjer ikkje det er vrøvl.
00:45
And there are some brilliant linguists, mostly Russians,
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Og det finst glimrande lingvistar, hovudsakleg russarar,
00:48
who are working on that, at Santa Fe Institute and in Moscow,
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som arbeider med det ved Santa Fe-instituttet og i Moskva,
00:52
and I would love to see where that leads.
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og eg vil veldig gjerne sjå kva det fører til.
00:56
Does it really lead to a single ancestor
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Fører det verkeleg til eit enkelt opphav
00:59
some 20, 25,000 years ago?
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for omtrent 20--25.000 år sidan?
01:02
And what if we go back beyond that single ancestor,
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Og kva om me går vidare bakover, forbi det eine opphavet,
01:05
when there was presumably a competition among many languages?
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då det truleg var konkurranse blant mange språk?
01:09
How far back does that go? How far back does modern language go?
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Kor langt tilbake går det? Kor langt tilbake går moderne språk?
01:13
How many tens of thousands of years does it go back?
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Kor mange titals tusen år går det 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 ei forventing eller ei von om kva svaret er?
01:19
Murray Gell-Mann: Well, I would guess that modern language must be older
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Murray Gell-Mann: Vel, eg trur moderne språk må vere eldre
01:22
than the cave paintings and cave engravings and cave sculptures
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enn holemåleria og helleristingene og holeskulpturane
01:26
and dance steps in the soft clay in the caves in Western Europe,
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og dansetrinna i den mjuke leira i holene i Vest-Europa
01:31
in the Aurignacian Period some 35,000 years ago, or earlier.
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i Aurignackulturen for omtrent 35.000 år sidan, eller tidlegare.
01:37
I can't believe they did all those things and didn't also have a modern language.
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Eg klarer ikkje å tru at dei gjorde alle dei tinga utan å ha eit 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 eg gjettar at det faktiske opphavet iallfall er så langt tilbake og kanskje endå lenger.
01:45
But that doesn't mean that all, or many, or most
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Men det vil ikkje seie at ikkje alle, eller mange, eller dei fleste
01:48
of today's attested languages couldn't descend perhaps
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av språka me har funne i dag, kanskje kunne stamme frå
01:52
from one that's much younger than that, like say 20,000 years,
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eit som er mykje yngre enn det, til dømes 20.000 år,
01:56
or something of that kind. It's what we call a bottleneck.
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eller noko slikt. Det er dette me kallar ein flaskehals.
02:00
CA: Well, Philip Anderson may have been right.
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CA: Vel, Philip Anderson kan ha hatt rett.
02:01
You may just know more about everything than anyone.
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Kanskje du rett og slett kan meir om alt enn nokon andre.
02:04
So, it's been an honor. Thank you Murray Gell-Mann.
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Så det har vore ei ære. Takk skal du ha, Murray Gell-Mann.
02:06
(Applause)
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(Applaus)
Translated by Kevin Unhammer
Reviewed by Kjartan Steen-Olsen

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ABOUT THE SPEAKER
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.

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.

More profile about the speaker
Murray Gell-Mann | Speaker | TED.com