What Comes First Language or Thought?

Steven Pinker finds that language comes naturally in human capacity. In “The Language Instinct,” he argues that even if thoughts may lead to form of speech, language and thoughts are not the same thing. He explains that thoughts do not necessarily depend on words, as one would not always be able to find specific words that exactly represent what one thinks. Countless amounts of thoughts can be created from a single mind, which would seem to be more complicated than a complete sentence, but Pinker is not focusing on the limitlessness of the mind, but the specific aspect of imagery without confusion. A sentence can provide a sense of time, action, and meaning generated from the source of thoughts. However, Pinker mentions how “sometimes a whole

Is there any evidence that animals think without language? Yes, there are two studies with elephants that display thinking. First, young male elephants in Africa formed groups in order to raid villages. These “problem elephants” (Hoare, 2001) intentionally raided the crop fields of villages located on the edge of their territory. The elephants did not attack individually, but only in groups. Hoare (2001) noted that

Also, it had been argued that human beings used to communicate using images before languages came up. Thought and concepts of a person are encoded in images and language was established in response to the human necessitate to create those thoughts and concepts known to others (Cambridge, 2012). Words are just taken to be symbols, and they lack intrinsic meaning while imagery itself is abstract expressions, patterns, which are the basis of the brain. Scholars also argue that when individuals experience emotions, they are retained somewhere within the system and that the aptitude to remember and practise the situation and its connected emotions is available to everybody.

Language is a cognitive function that most humans take for granted. The basic means of communication among individuals is through language. Language allows people to communicate with each other, share his or her thoughts and feelings, share ideas and concepts, fears, and affirmations. Different cultures have different languages as well as vocabulary and grammatically components that each one understands. The goal of this paper is to explain what language is and the many methods behind it, the cognitive process of perception and how it

Language is a cognitive function that most of us take for granted. It starts from early on, some say at conception, and it develops in complexity as we get older. It is an essential part of communication and without it its development would be greatly hindered. This natural process requires complex structures and reasoning, the bringing together of sounds and words to develop concrete ideas and thoughts. In this paper we will discuss the components of language and how it relates to cognitive processes.

“Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about.” – Benjamin Lee Whorf

The evolution of human language is a highly debated topic with many perspectives and theories dating back to the 19th century and as a result is it a subject full of ambiguity. This is due to the fact that there is an abundance of theories with evidence to give them grounds to argue, not only this, but because more than one aspect of the evolution of language is in question. The first question lies in the purpose of its development, what evolutionary advantages would it present early humanity. The second is how it came to fruition, was it through natural selection or was it taught. The third query lies within the early stages of human language, what form did it take and why. Was language always vocal or did it start by being gestural similar to sign language. There is an abundance of forms of communication in the animal kingdom, namely babies crying for their mothers’ attention or calls to warn of danger. However, this can not be deemed as a language because in the context of evolutionary linguistics, language is defined “as any system which allows for the free and unfettered expression of thoughts into signals, and the complementary interpretation of such signals into thoughts” (Fitch, 2010 pg.

It can be said that a cognitive component of language is the language of thought that of which all humans use.

Language plays a great role in the process of transmitting knowledge: everybody learns a language at a very early stage of their life and this means of communication will be used throughout in order to give and receive knowledge. In the course of just one day we claim that we know something just because we have read it somewhere or somebody has told us about it. We can therefore see what a powerful tool language is. The statement in the question, however, does not just mean that language is one of the most important ways of knowing, but even that it controls every other one of them with the capacity of influencing or determining our way of knowing the world. At a first sight this thesis seems quite logical: it would be hard for us to imagine a school or any way of transmitting knowledge without the use of language.

One of the elements that distinguish human beings from the rest of living beings is the ability to communicate in a systematized and understandable way, that is, using a language. Language is a complex system of symbols both phonetic and written that allows to communicate ideas, thoughts, feelings and different situations between two or more people. Since prehistory, human beings have had different or more complex forms of language, although it was only written in the year 3000 BC, a situation that favored the establishment of more accessible languages ​​or forms of communication for all .

Language is an important method of transmitting knowledge – it is the primary mode of communication, which is used in order to give or receive knowledge. For the purpose of this essay, language will be defined as an agreed method of communication that is either spoken or written, or intentionally transmitted through body language. The word “control”, in the statement above will be treated in the sense of “to regulate” or “to govern”. The statement means that perception, emotion and reason cannot function independently from language. Language plays an integral role in their ability to function. The statement suggests that without language, we would not be able to become aware of something using the senses, we would not be able to experience

The history of human language is long, complicated and somewhat controversial. Even the definitions of the word “language” are varied slightly. The Merriam-Webster dictionary states, “Language is the system of words or signs that people use to express thoughts and feelings to each other: and one of the systems of human language that are used and understood by a particular group of people: words of a particular kind”. Additionally, the American Heritage Dictionary defines language as, “a communication of thoughts and feelings through a system of arbitrary signals, such as voice sounds, gestures, or written symbols”. Between these two definitions of language we can see how complicated the history of human language actually is. The definitions vary based on the assumptions of whether the writer believes language is more learned or instinctive behavior.

I, for one, had always believed that I think using words. But this article from Science 2.0 let me know that thoughts are not words and vice versa. Also, we watched a video clip in class wherein Steven Pinker, a Harvard professor, explained that language is different from thought, writing and grammar.

Within Gee & Hayes (2011) the authors suggest that language can be understood as a cognitive process, something that is in our head, our brain and minds that tell us how to speak. Another view is that it is a physical aspect that is present in the form of speech, recordings and writings. It can also be viewed as a means of social convention shared by a group of people, about

An opposing argument would be that one’s thoughts aren’t necessarily used to communicate and yet they still use language. People talk like others and still each of us has our own unique style (Bakhtin, as cited in Gee and Hayes 2011, pg. 7). Our immediate surroundings in the early stages of development shape the language we learn to speak first. Looking at Darwin’s theory of evolution (1859, cited in O’Neil 2013, para. 20) and how the finches from the Galapagos Islands were all divergences of their ancestral species, the language which we develop from our social and cultural backgrounds evolves (obviously in a much faster process than that of the finches). This is the way language changes and yet remains the same.