Jeg involverer mig i andre ting end fysik. Lige nu mere i andre ting, faktisk.
Well, I'm involved in other things, besides physics. In fact, mostly now in other things.
Én ting er fjerne forbindelser mellem menneskesprog. Og de professionelle, historiske lingvister i USA og i Vesteuropa prøver som regel at holde sig væk fra fjerne forbindelser; store grupperinger, grupperinger som går lang tid tilbage, længere end de velkendte familier. Det kan de ikke lide; de synes det er søgt. Jeg synes ikke det er søgt. Og der findes nogle dygtige lingvister, mest russere, som arbejder med dette på Santa Fe Intistuttet og i Moskva, og jeg glæder mig til at se, hvad det fører til.
One thing is distant relationships among human languages. And the professional, historical linguists in the U.S. and in Western Europe mostly try to stay away from any long-distance relationships, big groupings, groupings that go back a long time, longer than the familiar families. They don't like that. They think it's crank. I don't think it's crank. And there are some brilliant linguists, mostly Russians, who are working on that, at Santa Fe Institute and in Moscow, and I would love to see where that leads.
Fører det virkelig til én enkelt forfar, der eksisterede for 20-25.000 år siden? Og hvad hvis vi går endnu længere tilbage end den ene forfar, hvor der sandsynligvis har været konkurrence mellem mange sprog? Hvor lang tid skal vi så tilbage? Hvor langt går moderne sprog tilbage? Hvor mange titusinder af år går sproget tilbage?
Does it really lead to a single ancestor some 20, 25,000 years ago? And what if we go back beyond that single ancestor, when there was presumably a competition among many languages? How far back does that go? How far back does modern language go? How many tens of thousands of years does it go back?
Chris Anderson: Har du en anelse eller forhåbning for, hvad svaret er?
Chris Anderson: Do you have a hunch or a hope for what the answer to that is?
Murray Gell-Mann: Tja, jeg vil tro at moderne sprog må være ældre end huletegninger, huleindgraveringer og huleskulpturer og sporene af dansetrin i den bløde ler i hulerne i Vesteuropa fra Aurignacienperioden for cirka 35.000 år siden, eller endnu før. Jeg kan ikke tro, at de gjorde alle disse ting uden også at have et moderne sprog. Så jeg gætter på, at den faktiske oprindelse går mindst så langt tilbage, måske længere.
Murray Gell-Mann: Well, I would guess that modern language must be older than the cave paintings and cave engravings and cave sculptures and dance steps in the soft clay in the caves in Western Europe, in the Aurignacian Period some 35,000 years ago, or earlier. I can't believe they did all those things and didn't also have a modern language. So, I would guess that the actual origin goes back at least that far and maybe further.
Men det betyder ikke at alle, eller mange af, eller de fleste af nutidens talte sprog ikke kan nedstamme fra en forfar meget yngre end det, eksempelvis 20.000 år, eller noget i den stil. Det er dét, vi kalder en flaskehals.
But that doesn't mean that all, or many, or most of today's attested languages couldn't descend perhaps from one that's much younger than that, like say 20,000 years, or something of that kind. It's what we call a bottleneck.
Chris Anderson: Philip Anderson har nok haft ret. Du ved nok mere om alt end nogen andre. Så det har været en ære. Tak skal du have, Murray Gell-Mann. (Klapsalve)
CA: Well, Philip Anderson may have been right. You may just know more about everything than anyone. So, it's been an honor. Thank you Murray Gell-Mann. (Applause)