Dear Neal,

Excellent points amplifying various aspects of my question. Formal languages contain no mysteries, we know what they are. Similar we know many pattern recognition algorithms. But we do not have algorithms for human languages.

A language is more than an individual language speaker. But it is not "its own thing independent of any speaker." Language contains a wealth of information accunulated in cultural evolution throughout thousands of years. This is why language can perceive in the surrounding world "important' categories, while ignoring near infinity of "unimportant." Categories do not exist in the world - just look at your cat, does he see the same categories that you do?

Of course categories are constructs of the mind, but not of an individual mind. They are constructs of collecive minds of culture(s). They are preserved and stored in languages. But without cognition they would be just empty sounds, so language cannot exist without individual minds, which make sense out of its sounds.

There are many nysteries to language. For example, why kids can talk without understanding? What exactly it means in terms of the mind mechanisms?

This is a relatively simple question to answer. E-language cannot escape the tentacles of communicjation, but I-language certainly CAN. So, E-language would assume other cognitive factors to co-mingle. I-language is totally distinct and has an evolutiojnary genetic program quite of its own. So, that's that. What non-verbal account can you give for the ungrammatical sentence like: " *Mary is going to shave himself." or " *He is going to John's home," where "he" and "John" are not anaphorically related, but that in the sentence " John is going to his home." the may be perfectly co-referential...but do not have to be.

The point here is that it is ludicrous to seek to account for this grammatical patterning by memory, attention, focus, communication requirements. These patterns are syntactically encapsulate and quite solopsistic. Hugh Buckingham

Hugh,

excellent comment! Are these ideas about I and E languages supported by neurologic data? Do we know how they are conneted to cognition? Do you support Chomsky in that cognition and language are separate? To what extent?

Leonid: I must say that I know of no way on earth to handle the deep patterning of human "internal" syntactic patterns such as island contraints, referential binding and hierarchical sturctural vs. linear structure for human syntax in its genetic and evolutionary sweep through time. This kind of syntactic conditioning is completely divorced from the pragmatic needs of language as one communicates with it. This is external language, E-language and is pragmatic and dependant on the demands of communicative effectiveness. I-language is NOT related to this. Unless linguists keep this distinction of the word "language" in clear view, they will stumble in any and all attempts to thwart the Chomskyan generative challenge. Before any anti generativist claims are made, the I vs. E distinction Chomsky makes must be forcefully rendered assunder. This is not easy to do, but unless it is done at the outset, no further counter argumentation is worth persuing. This misuse of Chomskyan thought has been going on ever since others have attacked him for not including, for example, speech acts in his work. That attack is simply invalid unless it is first shown that the pragmatics of speech act theory has anything to do with I-Language evolvement in the brain. E-language is NOT biology; I-Language is quite so. Hugh Woodstock Buckingham, Jr.

Thank you Hugh.

Best,

Leonid

I understand 'language', but I don't know what you mean by cognition. We use language in order to describe reality. As no-one knows what reality is, the use of language shows up most clearly in doing work. If our use is adequate, then we can change reality (and persuasively involve others and get paid), if it is not then nothing changes (or not as we wish) or we are ignored or fired. Changing reality (work) includes producing what is viewed as scientific knowledge or building a chair or arguing a court case etc---many domains.

People have different capabilities in regard to work (ie reliably changing reality in various ways), because they use language differently. This is not well understood. I had to clarify the way that language is used, and then further differentiate for style. If this line of thought interests you, you can read more about this in the TOP Studio Frameworks Room at thee-online.com (under EXPLORE THEE -- but it requires a login to see the navigation).

Warren,

An excellent point, it is not obvious what is cognition without a language. Here are few examples:

- animals without language have some cognition, so there is cognition without a language.

- human brain has areas of language semantics and cognitive semantics, they are separate

- abstract words are usually processed by the language area and not by cognitive area, this supports that abstract cognition is mostly due to language

- yet there are cases of abstract cognition beyond what exists in language, otherwise there will be no evolution of culture and language; creativity goes beyond language

What do you think?

I feel that I know what language is. I can use it, learn it etc. I don't think of it as a concept but as an experientially real thing. I don't know what cognition is. Cognition is a concept: those are dead and lifeless and meaningless unless you are part of the in-group which I'm not. So as for your examples, I can't comprehend or comment.

If you want to talk about thinking, or knowing, or intuiting, or believing, then you enter the world where a person can know what they are talking about once again. The problem with neuroscience investigating psychological phenomena is that it is ultra-sophisticated on the neuro side, but its grasp of the psychological is primitive and medieval, simplistic and foolish. I am working to bring psychosocial phenomena into proper focus. (By the way, my first degree was in neurophysiology.)

In your last example, creativity and evolution of culture are both meaningful notions. So I can engage in discussion about those to some degree.

I am surprised no one seems to have mentioned the congenitally deaf. When assessed with standard Wechsler tests they are found to have normal performance (non-verbal) IQs, consistent with the deafness resulting from damage to the cochlea but not to the brain. However, their verbal IQs are considerably depressed, presumably consequent upon auditory deprivation, consistent with their poor language, speech, reading and academic attainment.

Anthony,

Your comment seems consistent with a point that thinking is mostly language-based, cognition without language might be much more limited than usually assumed. I am not sure what is your point?

One point was that a century of psychometric research into intelligence can help sort out the link posed in the question, and validate different types of cognition. Clearly, many higher cognitive skills are intact in the Deaf, as performance IQs are normal. However, for academic success, and blogging on this site (but not many others!), it is high verbal IQ that is crucial. While I suspect that some humanities departments are over-languaged, the only case I have seen documented where high verbal IQ is disadvantageous is in pilots. They need a high level of non-verbal IQ and visuospatial skills, but for a given level of high non-verbal IQ, the higher the verbal IQ, the worse they do. In an emergency they first try using man's highest and most sophisticated assets, the language areas of the cortex. Meanwhile, the plane has crashed.

Anthony,

What about sign languages?

I define cognition in any living organism on how the organism coordinate its actions based on the sensory information available. Cognition = sense-acting. We are mammal and as all mammal we dream and we learn from expeprience. During highly emotinall/important activity we the sequence of sense-acting schema are stored and during REM sleep they are used to automated into long sequence of optimal sense-acting schema which become permanently incorporated into our hiearchical sense-acting system. The highly social life of our ancestor has created an environment where learning during waking time became a primordial requirement and the baldwin effect has accelerate the capacity to self-enact our sense-acting system as during dream allowing real-time learning. This is imagination and art. This has created a split into our awareness field where the self-enacted dream rival our regular mammalian awareness. This self-enacted dream is our stream of thought. We have learn to enact with our body movement our stream of thought and other human who have a split awareness field have learn to distinguish a theatrical performance from a regular activities. Theatrical language was invented. Standardization of the signs have created words and specific languages. The Baldwin effect has accelerated the modification of the vocal track so the standard sign word could be enacted with voice only: and human language was invented.

Deaf children and those working in vocally-challenging surroundings like a very noisy factory spontaneously generate sign languages, which clearly serve the need for communication. These can have complex grammars. But, while they are adaptive in the Deaf community, they are also isolating. Even highly competent sign language interpreters find this so cognitively challenging that they can only work in bursts of about 20 mins. Hence, it is simply too difficult for someone with sign as their first language to be a high achiever in the hearing world. Having an unreliable interpreter doesn't help either:

"Leslie Grange, 32, has been a sign language interpreter for seven years. In a statement today she cited ‘personal difficulties – particularly a crushing professional boredom’ as to why, over the past six months, she had started deviating from what was actually being reported, giving deaf viewers an often ‘wildly different version of events’.

“Questions started to be raised around the time of the Japanese earthquake when several viewers emailed us to complain about our reports of radioactive zombies sighted near the nuclear reactor. We dismissed them as some sort of organised hoax.”

“However, when there were similar numbers getting in touch to ask if Rebekah Brooks was really in trouble for raping a monkey, and why the BBC was claiming that, as a special summer treat, the Prime Minister had told the nation’s teenagers they didn’t have to pay for anything any more, we realised something was wrong.”

“I would like to apologise to everyone in the deaf community,” Grange told reporters today, “though when I had Cameron tell Obama “your statesmen-like profile leaves my willy plump” – well, frankly I don’t think that is so very far from the truth.”

Does anyone have a new job for Leslie?