full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Murray Gell-Mann: The ancestor of language

Unscramble the Blue Letters


Well, I'm involved in other things, besides physics. In fact, mostly now in other things.

One thing is distant rilnsehitpoas 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, gognuiprs 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 stana Fe itttsunie and in Moscow, and I would love to see where that leads.

Open Cloze


Well, I'm involved in other things, besides physics. In fact, mostly now in other things.

One thing is distant _____________ 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, _________ 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 _____ Fe _________ and in Moscow, and I would love to see where that leads.

Solution


  1. santa
  2. relationships
  3. groupings
  4. institute

Original Text


Well, I'm involved in other things, besides physics. In fact, mostly now in other things.

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.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
modern language 3


Important Words


  1. big
  2. brilliant
  3. crank
  4. distant
  5. europe
  6. fact
  7. familiar
  8. families
  9. fe
  10. groupings
  11. historical
  12. human
  13. institute
  14. involved
  15. languages
  16. leads
  17. linguists
  18. long
  19. longer
  20. love
  21. moscow
  22. physics
  23. professional
  24. relationships
  25. russians
  26. santa
  27. stay
  28. time
  29. western
  30. working