Well, I'm involved in other things, besides physics. In fact, mostly now in other things.
Ben, ademais da física, estou enleado noutras cousas. De feito, agora estou principalmente noutras cousas.
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.
Unha delas é a relación distante entre as diferentes linguas humanas. Os profesionais, lingüistas históricos nos EEUU e en Europa Occidental, tentan de maneira especial manterse lonxe de calquera relación afastada no tempo, das grandes agrupacións, agrupacións que se remontan moito no tempo, moito máis cás familias familiares. Eles non gustan disto, cren que son excentricidades. Eu non. E hai algúns lingüistas brillantes, a maioría rusos, que están a traballar nisto no Instituto de Santa Fe e en Moscú, e a min encantaríame ver a onde os leva.
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?
Lévanos realmente a un único antepasado de hai uns 20 ou 25 000 anos? E que pasa se imos máis alá de este antepasado único, cando imaxino que había unha competición entre moitas linguaxes? Como de lonxe se remonta isto? Ata onde se remontan as linguas modernas? Cantas decenas de miles de anos?
Chris Anderson: Do you have a hunch or a hope for what the answer to that is?
Vostede ten o presentimento ou a esperanza de cal é a resposta?
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.
Ben, supoño que as linguas modernas deben ser máis antigas cás pinturas, os gravados e as esculturas das cavernas e as pisadas de baile na lama das cavernas de Europa Occidental, no período Auriñacense hai uns 35 000 anos ou máis. Eu non podo crer que fixeran todas esas cousas e non tiveran xa unha linguaxe moderna. Así que eu diría que a verdadeira orixe se remonta polo menos ata ese momento e, se cadra, máis.
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.
Pero isto non significa que todas, ou moitas, ou a maioría das linguas que se coñecen na actualidade non proveñan dunha moito máis nova ca iso, como de hai 20 000 anos, ou algo polo estilo. É o que chamamos unha conxestión.
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)
Ben, pode que Philip Anderson tivese razón. Vostede debe saber máis de todo que ninguén. Así que, foi todo un honor. Grazas Murray Gell-Mann. (Aplausos)