Well, I'm involved in other things, besides physics. In fact, mostly now in other things.
Vel, jeg er involvert i andre ting enn fysikk. Nå er det faktisk mest andre ting.
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.
En ting er fjerne forbindelser mellom menneskepråk. De profesjonelle språkforskerene i USA og i Vest-Europa prøver å holde seg unna disse langdistanse forholdene; store samlinger, samlinger som går langt tilbake i tid, lenger enn kjente språkfamilier. De tenker ikke slik; de tror det er for drøyt. Jeg tror ikke det er for drøyt. Og det er noen briljante språkforskere, mest russere, som jobber på Santa Fe Instituttet og i Moskva, og jeg vil gjerne se hva det leder til.
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?
Kommer det til å lede til en enkelt stamfar for sånn 20-25,000 år tilbake? Og hva om det går tilbake før den stamfaren, der det sikkert var konkurranse mellom forskjellige språk? Hvor langt tilbake går det? Hvor langt tilbake går det moderne språk? Hvor mange titusener av år tilbake?
Chris Anderson: Do you have a hunch or a hope for what the answer to that is?
Chris Anderson: Har du en tanke eller et håp om hva svaret kan være?
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.
Murray Gell-Mann: Vel, jeg antar at det moderne språk er eldre enn hulemalerier, graveringer, skulpturer, og den myke leiren i Vest-Europeiske huler under den Aurignacianske perioden for 35,000 år siden, eller tidligere. Jeg kan ikke tro at de gjorde alle de tingene og ikke hadde et moderne språk. Så jeg antar at det går tilbake, kanskje enda lengre.
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.
Men det betyr ikke at alle, eller mange, eller de fleste av dagens språk ikke kunne stamme fra et yngre enn det for omtrent 20,000 år, eller noe slikt. Det er det vi kaller en flaskehals.
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)
CA: Vell, Phillip Anderson kan ha hatt rett. Du kan kansje mer om alt enn noen andre. Så det har vært en ære. Takk til Murray Gell-Mann. (Applaus)