Murray Gell-Mann: Do all languages have a common ancestor?

http://www.ted.com After speaking at TED2007 on elegance in physics, the amazing Murray Gell-Mann gives a quick overview of another passionate interest: finding the common ancestry of our modern languages.

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[tribble666]

Dont you think he deserves a little more repsect than that?

[lolwtfomfglol]

plenty of people appreciate cunning linguists

[theoriginalpandanon]

I'm a linguistics major. There is theory of the innateness of language. So where instead of all languages coming from a single language, humans are born with 90% of what makes up language. Really the only parts that tend to differ are the vocabulary words we use to refer to different things. There is a critical period, believed to be from birth to puberty, and once it is gone it is impossible to master language. Which is why feral children never learn to communicate effectively.

[Contextcatcher]

Our vocabularies transform as our (social) surroundings do.."modern".. is word showed up not 'long' ago comparing with evolutinary times. In New Guinea Papuas have a lot of different languages (820!) in a small area. Many languages passed away like many nature people. Syntax languages are also chanceable. The search for common language is an illusion promote by Chomsky (universal grammar) and his admirers. Linguistics never write about a mask (identity) qualitie of languages: like old myhts do.

[Ramsez]

LINKS!!! INFORMATION!!! 2 mins is not a talk...

[googoo120]

@sabadabaduz groups seperate and loose their previously shared language. They may then assimilate with a predominate language once again.

[sabadabaduz]

And the common ancestor must be just as old as the earliest escape from africa - australia has been inhabited some 70000 years they say. It doesn't sound realistic that a different language was brought to and subsequently adopted by the aborigines 25000 years ago.

[sabadabaduz]

there's a book by martin ruhlen: "in search of the mother tongue" which claims that there is a common ancestor to all languages we find today. I found the book to be so-so convincing. Intriguing of course it is.

Btw: Gell-mann's suggestion that a common ancestor might be younger than the oldest language doesn't go into my head at all. that would mean a group of men discarding their language and adopting a completely different one?

[islandbuoy4]

the first zig zag etched found in a cave about 100,000 years ago.

ZIG ZAGs are important in language development and of course connected to the WEAVES we find in Celtic patterns and Neo-lithic GEOMETRIC script found in the Vinca region of ole europa.

[polymath7]

@lolwtfomfglol I'm not only a cunning linguist but a master debater.

[VantekHG]

@lolwtfomfglol

indeed, roughly half of the human population, I'd say