Posted: May 17, 2011 10:39 am
jamest wrote:
It's the mind which forges language, not vice versa. One has the capacity to think about concepts even if there are no contemporary words for those concepts.
It's not an either/or thing, but a two-way process. My mind was "forged" in social interaction, which is largely linguistic. It is this that allows me to participate in future language development, including by coming up with concepts of my own, and with new means of expressing them linguistically.
If it were true that one's mind was constrained to think within the parameters of a known language, then new conceptions/ideas would have been impossible and mankind would still be swinging in the trees.
True. Well, as long as you don't take the swinging in trees bit literally.
