Language
This article is about the human language as studied in Psychology and Linguistics. See also Natural Language Processing for details about NLP within the field of AI.
Noam Chomsky says
language is for thought.
the capacity for language is built in to the structure of the brain
The external language is learned.
relationship of language, communication, thought
Chomsky says language is for thought, only secondarily for communication
Chomsky says that language is a medium of thought.
Language consists of words and rules.
The dictionary contains the complete list of words. Each person has a vocabulary, which is some subset of the words in the dictionary.
There are three sets of rules.
- Phonology - the sounds of each symbol
- Morphology - how letters can be combined into syllables, and syllables into words
- Grammar - how words can be combined into phrases, clauses, and sentences
Syntax == Grammar
Cultural languages like English, French, Sanskrit, Mandarin, etc. are external. These are learned by each infant human, depending on the culture in which he is raised.
The mind also has an internal language, much simplified and abstracted. This is not learned, but is built into the structure of the mind. It is universal to all humans. It arose with the development of homo sapien some hundred thousand years ago, and has not evolved since.
On listening, one must translate the incoming message from the spoken cultural language into the internal language of the mind.
On speaking, one must translate the outgoing message from the internal language into the culture language.
Talking to oneself. One form of cognition.