I'm not sure I understand the first question. We're all born thinking in no language whatsoever, deaf or not. Language later maps itself onto our brain, just as vision does, just as sound does.
So I would think that we all think in whatever language imprints upon those centers of the brain - though its manifestation may be plus or minus the visual or auditory depending on our own experience of the language.
I'd bet that if there are extra senses that our brain is capable of perceiving, any of us who awoke that sense late in life would be very much impaired in its use compared to someone who had it from infancy.
I’m not so sure that we are born thinking in no language whatsoever. I haven’t looked a lot into it, but there is research around that indicates humans learn elements of what will be their first language in utero. I take that to mean our very first thoughts are literally in our mother tongue. But, I guess what you mean is that some people think in images because that is their language, their form of communication … even that is a head spin – thinking in images, not words. Maybe it’s just me, but that’s blowing my mind!
Yes; I've seen those studies too - newborns to French-speaking parents crying and vocalizing with a rising inflection, while German newborns exhibit a falling inflection. I imagine the womb's a bit of an echo chamber, and mom's voice is as much the soundtrack as mom's heartbeat and breathing!
But I don't think we're talking language, there. What the infant steeps in is a melody of sorts - a tone and a timbre, definitely, but we've seen nothing to indicate there is any level of syntax or grammar (or vocabulary) that penetrates, beyond mere inflection. I'd argue that the music of inflection alone is entirely severable from the language itself. After all, French can be spoken with absolute fluency by those of German descent, accent and inflection, and vice versa.
It's not really the language being learned in utero, just the music and melody that underlies a language in that group of speakers, as heard in the voice of the mother. It should be no surprise that the infant comes out humming it!
Chinese is another story, of course. Vocal inflection's so much more deeply ingrained into the meaning and even vocabulary - but I think this is more an exception; I don't think the existence of languages in that mold says anything universal about human development in other languages that lean less on inflection.
I think the main point for me would be - words are thought-forms in their own right. Objects of meaning, at one remove from the thought they have been created or evolved to embody. Word-sounds and word-signs (written or gestural) are, it seems to me, thought-forms twice removed. They attach to the word, which in turn calls forth the thought, the meaning.
We all know that words aren’t necessary for thought, because we’ve all experienced what it’s like to have the thought and not the word. We know the frustration of having a very specific and particular thought and KNOWING there's a word attached to that thought but we can't call it forth. Argh!!!
Thankfully, most of our passing thoughts have a host of words at the ready, to latch on and fill out the conceptual shape of the thoughts that pass our transoms. Often these forms attach themselves as our thoughts go by, even where they’re not needed – because we are only thinking to ourselves, we are not trying to put thought into word. We are very practiced in attaching words to all our passing thoughts, that practice is habit, become second-nature to the degree we feel how necessary the words are, just to think at all.
But we don't need the words, habit notwithstanding. Lost in peace, in calm, or when we're running through thoughts a mile a minute, we may not even consciously parse the thoughts into words at all. There may be a word for almost every possible concept that can be grasped and stuffed into a word, but thought comes first - and doesn’t always bother with the stuffing, especially when you’re not trying to post that thought to another’s mind. You don’t need it! Even in an imagined a conversation with another - doesn't your mind sometimes stray from casting the exchange into specific words? When I’m fully immersed in an imagined exchange, thoughts will skip like stones across the surface of language, words will splash into being for only a tithe of what's being said. Because what's being said, what needs to be, and where it's all going at the moment are all more or less known or knowable with only the one mind working through it all. I win most of those arguments.
Words are necessary as a medium of exchange between minds. We need to have these mutually-agreed upon words, which between us, we have a tolerable agreement as to what each means and how they operate in sequence to convey a point. And words are so congenial to the expression of thought that we use them even when we think to ourselves, but not always.
Hm. It’s probably not accurate to call the word a thought-form once removed, and the sensory expressions secondary attachments to the primary object, the word. It seems more accurate to say the sensory form of a word is itself a thought-form, directly attached to the thought. Each sensory form accesses the thought independent of the others, however, a person with a complement of senses will naturally bundle all of the sense-forms “under” one word. Yet someone who has never been other than blind never conceives of the word in the letters you see spelt out, b-l-i-n-d. If they read braille, they have a tactile thought form that attaches. A hearing person has a sound-form. It would be hard to say these forms do not access directly or attach directly to the thought embodied by the word!
So really, the “word” is an organizational category. It has attached to it as many forms as the user has, of the usually available senses. It need not be realized as sound, ever. It need not be realized as sight, ever. A word need never have a specific tactile sensation attached to it, or any gestural sign. Is it possible to have any understanding of a “word” that is not tied to at least one sense-form?
YES. I just had one. Don’t ask. It was really lame and vague.
It goes without saying that users of more than one language may have additional words bundled in as cognates, but those are groupings of convenience for a none-too-fluent speaker. As the speaker becomes fluenct, their original language is no longer needed to mediate. They’ll put their meaning directly into the words of the spoken tongue.
Sometimes I find a word will JUMP UP IN FRONT OF ME (of my mind's eye, not via hallucination). Sometimes it's when my thought is stuck in incomprehension of some thing, and the mind is calling up whatever it can to help: "Here's what a key word in your thought LOOKS LIKE! That help?!" Thanks, mind! Or "Here's a DIFFERENT word means about the same thing! Any better?"
Less often, a single word will visualize when the thought it commands is of such power or importance, it catches and holds my thought prisoner, if you will. And then too frequently to notice, really, I'll have random, occasional word-glimpses at the corners of the mind's eye, flitting past doing and meaning nothing. Just associations called forth by the words that have attached themselves, lamprey-like, to passing thoughts.
Hearing the sound of thought words is more common, for me, and I suspect, for everyone "with ears to hear," as they say. For the hearing, the sound component is far more ingrained than the visual, just as spoken language is far more deeply ingrained in us than the comparatively-recent signs attached to written language (and far more recently yet, sign language).
Comments
Or should that be, "It sure has been!"
I can't even begin to grasp the concept.
It's fair doing my head in.
What does thinking sound lke when you can't hear?
Whoa.
So I would think that we all think in whatever language imprints upon those centers of the brain - though its manifestation may be plus or minus the visual or auditory depending on our own experience of the language.
I'd bet that if there are extra senses that our brain is capable of perceiving, any of us who awoke that sense late in life would be very much impaired in its use compared to someone who had it from infancy.
But I don't think we're talking language, there. What the infant steeps in is a melody of sorts - a tone and a timbre, definitely, but we've seen nothing to indicate there is any level of syntax or grammar (or vocabulary) that penetrates, beyond mere inflection. I'd argue that the music of inflection alone is entirely severable from the language itself. After all, French can be spoken with absolute fluency by those of German descent, accent and inflection, and vice versa.
It's not really the language being learned in utero, just the music and melody that underlies a language in that group of speakers, as heard in the voice of the mother. It should be no surprise that the infant comes out humming it!
Chinese is another story, of course. Vocal inflection's so much more deeply ingrained into the meaning and even vocabulary - but I think this is more an exception; I don't think the existence of languages in that mold says anything universal about human development in other languages that lean less on inflection.
We all know that words aren’t necessary for thought, because we’ve all experienced what it’s like to have the thought and not the word. We know the frustration of having a very specific and particular thought and KNOWING there's a word attached to that thought but we can't call it forth. Argh!!!
Thankfully, most of our passing thoughts have a host of words at the ready, to latch on and fill out the conceptual shape of the thoughts that pass our transoms. Often these forms attach themselves as our thoughts go by, even where they’re not needed – because we are only thinking to ourselves, we are not trying to put thought into word. We are very practiced in attaching words to all our passing thoughts, that practice is habit, become second-nature to the degree we feel how necessary the words are, just to think at all.
But we don't need the words, habit notwithstanding. Lost in peace, in calm, or when we're running through thoughts a mile a minute, we may not even consciously parse the thoughts into words at all. There may be a word for almost every possible concept that can be grasped and stuffed into a word, but thought comes first - and doesn’t always bother with the stuffing, especially when you’re not trying to post that thought to another’s mind. You don’t need it! Even in an imagined a conversation with another - doesn't your mind sometimes stray from casting the exchange into specific words? When I’m fully immersed in an imagined exchange, thoughts will skip like stones across the surface of language, words will splash into being for only a tithe of what's being said. Because what's being said, what needs to be, and where it's all going at the moment are all more or less known or knowable with only the one mind working through it all. I win most of those arguments.
Words are necessary as a medium of exchange between minds. We need to have these mutually-agreed upon words, which between us, we have a tolerable agreement as to what each means and how they operate in sequence to convey a point. And words are so congenial to the expression of thought that we use them even when we think to ourselves, but not always.
So really, the “word” is an organizational category. It has attached to it as many forms as the user has, of the usually available senses. It need not be realized as sound, ever. It need not be realized as sight, ever. A word need never have a specific tactile sensation attached to it, or any gestural sign. Is it possible to have any understanding of a “word” that is not tied to at least one sense-form?
YES. I just had one. Don’t ask. It was really lame and vague.
It goes without saying that users of more than one language may have additional words bundled in as cognates, but those are groupings of convenience for a none-too-fluent speaker. As the speaker becomes fluenct, their original language is no longer needed to mediate. They’ll put their meaning directly into the words of the spoken tongue.
Sometimes I find a word will JUMP UP IN FRONT OF ME (of my mind's eye, not via hallucination). Sometimes it's when my thought is stuck in incomprehension of some thing, and the mind is calling up whatever it can to help: "Here's what a key word in your thought LOOKS LIKE! That help?!" Thanks, mind! Or "Here's a DIFFERENT word means about the same thing! Any better?"
Less often, a single word will visualize when the thought it commands is of such power or importance, it catches and holds my thought prisoner, if you will. And then too frequently to notice, really, I'll have random, occasional word-glimpses at the corners of the mind's eye, flitting past doing and meaning nothing. Just associations called forth by the words that have attached themselves, lamprey-like, to passing thoughts.
Hearing the sound of thought words is more common, for me, and I suspect, for everyone "with ears to hear," as they say. For the hearing, the sound component is far more ingrained than the visual, just as spoken language is far more deeply ingrained in us than the comparatively-recent signs attached to written language (and far more recently yet, sign language).
Show Your Thinking
Thank you for expanding on this. I'm going to ponder for a bit longer on what you've written.