Well, I'm involved in other things, besides physics. In fact, mostly now in other things.
Poleg fizike se ukvarjam še z drugimi stvarmi. V bistvu se trenutno ukvarjam predvsem z drugimi stvarmi.
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.
Ena stvar je daljna povezava med človeškimi jeziki. Profesionalni zgodovinski jezikoslovci v ZDA in Zahodni Evropi se večinoma poskušajo izogniti vsakršnim daljnim povezavam; velikim skupinam, skupinam, ki izvirajo iz daljne preteklosti, ki so bolj oddaljene kot znane družine. To jim ni všeč; menijo, da je to noro. Jaz ne menim, da je noro. Nekateri drugi sijajni jezikoslovci, predvsem Rusi, pa preučujejo to temo na Inštitutu Santa Fe in v Moskvi. Zelo me zanima, kaj bodo ugotovili.
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?
Ali jeziki res izvirajo iz enega samega prednika izpred 20 ali 25 000 let? Kaj pa je bilo še pred tem edinim prednikom, ko naj bi številni jeziki tekmovali med seboj? Koliko časa nazaj sega to? Koliko časa nazaj sega moderni jezik? Koliko deset tisočev let sega to nazaj?
Chris Anderson: Do you have a hunch or a hope for what the answer to that is?
Chris Anderson: Imate kakšno idejo ali upanje, kako se glasi odgovor?
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: Menim, da je moderni jezik starejši kot jamske poslikave, jamske grafike, jamske skulpture in plesni koraki v mehki glini v jamah Zahodne Evrope iz aurignacienskega obdobja pred 35 000 leti, ali še prej. Ne morem verjeti, da so naredili vse te stvari in da hkrati niso imeli modernega jezika. Menim, da jezik v resnici izvira iz tega časa ali še od prej.
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.
Toda to ne pomeni, da vsi ali veliko ali večina danes potrjenih jezikov ne bi mogla izvirati iz enega jezika, ki je veliko mlajši, na primer 20 000 let. Temu pravimo ozko grlo.
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: Philip Anderson je morda imel prav. Morda res veste več o vsem kot kdorkoli drug. Bilo nam je v čast. Hvala, Murray Gell-Mann. (Aplavz)