Thought would come first. What would language map onto if there was no thought? We think in pictures and relations in ways language can't often capture. Language is linear thought is parallel so more complex and language is an attempt to represent thought and communicate and influence others.
Definitely thought, followed by associations, usually picture-like then a quantum leap to a more abstract visual we may call langauge.
Thought is a process in the mind of a human body. Thought provides us the visual images to recognise a particular thing, article etc. Accordingly it sends signals to the other sensory organs to respond. Communication is to communicate your thoughts that is understandable to others. Man is a social animal, he want to share his thoughts his fellow beings. So the language come into being. Different sounds become a language. There are "n" number of language on this earth. But the thought process is the same.
I agree with that thought comes first, linguistic evidence seems to imply this, as does to phenomenon of people being able to speak various languages without an intermediate translation step.
I also curious what John meant by language mapping onto thought. This seems possible but I would be interested in more details. ...?
Thought. Language is simply the tool to help us express and share thought. Thought can still occur and you can still recognize things without having a name for them.
From a Cartesian viewpoint perception comes first, which is in a large part determined unconsciously by our social conditioning. Our nature and our conditioning then lead us to verbal expression. Nature has a large role in determining the direction of the thought. However, the range of expression with language depends on our conditioning and education.
You can get too mechanistic or materialistic in describing how we produce language as well. For instance, in unusual circumstances when there are people who "speak in tongues" is there any thought process at all, or is it coming from another source beyond thought? In inspired speakers, is there what we would call conventional thought occurring in the background while they are speaking?
by William Thomas 14 years ago
No special expertise is needed for this question, of course. Just look deeply into yourself, and tell me what you think the connection is between language and thought (how have you noticed the cycle operate within yourself)? What role do you think it played in human evolution?Do you think the...
by Jeff Berndt 14 years ago
Here's a question for all you bilingual or multi-lingual people out there:Has learning a second or third language changed the way you think about the world in general?I can speak a smattering of a couple languages other than my native one (not even close to fluency), and I've found it easier to...
by Selmier1 13 years ago
Did thought process come before language
by Elefanza 11 years ago
What is the best way to stop thinking?Basically, I'm having a hard time running right now because I can't convince my brain to turn off. This conflicts with when I want to run as running distracts from thought. I want to keep running, but it's hard to stop thinking. Anyone have any thoughts on...
by Stevennix2001 17 months ago
Since I've been on hubpages and doing various research on movies that are fixing to come out and such, I noticed something highly strange that I never thought of before until now. Online, I notice all these users on imdb, yahoo, superherohype and all these other sites that I get resources...
by TruthDebater 14 years ago
Which comes first, the subjective or the objective? Also, which is more important to life?
Copyright © 2025 The Arena Media Brands, LLC and respective content providers on this website. HubPages® is a registered trademark of The Arena Platform, Inc. Other product and company names shown may be trademarks of their respective owners. The Arena Media Brands, LLC and respective content providers to this website may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website.
Copyright © 2025 Maven Media Brands, LLC and respective owners.
As a user in the EEA, your approval is needed on a few things. To provide a better website experience, hubpages.com uses cookies (and other similar technologies) and may collect, process, and share personal data. Please choose which areas of our service you consent to our doing so.
For more information on managing or withdrawing consents and how we handle data, visit our Privacy Policy at: https://corp.maven.io/privacy-policy
Show DetailsNecessary | |
---|---|
HubPages Device ID | This is used to identify particular browsers or devices when the access the service, and is used for security reasons. |
Login | This is necessary to sign in to the HubPages Service. |
Google Recaptcha | This is used to prevent bots and spam. (Privacy Policy) |
Akismet | This is used to detect comment spam. (Privacy Policy) |
HubPages Google Analytics | This is used to provide data on traffic to our website, all personally identifyable data is anonymized. (Privacy Policy) |
HubPages Traffic Pixel | This is used to collect data on traffic to articles and other pages on our site. Unless you are signed in to a HubPages account, all personally identifiable information is anonymized. |
Amazon Web Services | This is a cloud services platform that we used to host our service. (Privacy Policy) |
Cloudflare | This is a cloud CDN service that we use to efficiently deliver files required for our service to operate such as javascript, cascading style sheets, images, and videos. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Hosted Libraries | Javascript software libraries such as jQuery are loaded at endpoints on the googleapis.com or gstatic.com domains, for performance and efficiency reasons. (Privacy Policy) |
Features | |
---|---|
Google Custom Search | This is feature allows you to search the site. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Maps | Some articles have Google Maps embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Charts | This is used to display charts and graphs on articles and the author center. (Privacy Policy) |
Google AdSense Host API | This service allows you to sign up for or associate a Google AdSense account with HubPages, so that you can earn money from ads on your articles. No data is shared unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Google YouTube | Some articles have YouTube videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Vimeo | Some articles have Vimeo videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Paypal | This is used for a registered author who enrolls in the HubPages Earnings program and requests to be paid via PayPal. No data is shared with Paypal unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Facebook Login | You can use this to streamline signing up for, or signing in to your Hubpages account. No data is shared with Facebook unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Maven | This supports the Maven widget and search functionality. (Privacy Policy) |
Marketing | |
---|---|
Google AdSense | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Google DoubleClick | Google provides ad serving technology and runs an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Index Exchange | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Sovrn | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Facebook Ads | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Amazon Unified Ad Marketplace | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
AppNexus | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Openx | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Rubicon Project | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
TripleLift | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Say Media | We partner with Say Media to deliver ad campaigns on our sites. (Privacy Policy) |
Remarketing Pixels | We may use remarketing pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to advertise the HubPages Service to people that have visited our sites. |
Conversion Tracking Pixels | We may use conversion tracking pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to identify when an advertisement has successfully resulted in the desired action, such as signing up for the HubPages Service or publishing an article on the HubPages Service. |
Statistics | |
---|---|
Author Google Analytics | This is used to provide traffic data and reports to the authors of articles on the HubPages Service. (Privacy Policy) |
Comscore | ComScore is a media measurement and analytics company providing marketing data and analytics to enterprises, media and advertising agencies, and publishers. Non-consent will result in ComScore only processing obfuscated personal data. (Privacy Policy) |
Amazon Tracking Pixel | Some articles display amazon products as part of the Amazon Affiliate program, this pixel provides traffic statistics for those products (Privacy Policy) |
Clicksco | This is a data management platform studying reader behavior (Privacy Policy) |