language parabole

The question about what comes first, language or though is quite tricky, in the sense that we might believe that though comes first, because we think on what we want and want to express it, but maybe languages comes first, and that gives our thoughs the form they have.

Professor of Psychology Elizabeth Spelk



main ideas


1)New experiments with five-month-olds favor the conclusion that thought comes first.


2)many scientists suspected that children must learn the relevant concepts as they learn their language. That's wrong, Spelke insists.


3)Spelke and Susan Hespos, a psychologist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., did some clever experiments to show that the idea of tight/loose fitting comes before the words that are used/not used to describe it.


guardian.co.uk


Here we got a lot of diferent opinions of what comes first, added by people.



So we can say that we first think and then we talk, according to the experiments realized by Elizabeth Spelk.

Personal thoughs.
I think this is a very tricky question, there might be very different answers. I believe that before using language, you think about things. It´s confusing, but in my opinion to use language you need to have a concept first, you need to think. It´s very amazing how human mind works, specially when we are very young.
They were also two more questions, can we think without language? I think that you are able to do so, but what you are not able to do is express it, without language you can say what you are thinking to another person.

Is ir possible that we think in images? Of course, we do it everyday, because we associate a word to an image of the thing, situation, etc that is being said to us, try it yourself, what if I say the word computer?, can you relate it with an image?