Thought and language

How are thought and language related? Three views:

• Language determines thought (Benjamin Lee Whorf): the language we speak shapes how we think and see the world. This is linguistic relativity. The strong form, that we cannot think about something our language has no word for, is not supported by research; people everywhere can perceive colours their language does not name, for example.
• Thought precedes language (Jean Piaget): children first develop ideas through action and experience, and language develops to express them.
• Separate, then joined (Lev Vygotsky): until about two years, thought and language develop separately. After that they merge: thought becomes verbal and speech becomes rational.

What is language? Language is a system of symbols (sounds, letters, signs), organised by rules (grammar), used to communicate with others. By this definition sign language is a full language, with its own grammar, used by people who are deaf.

How children develop language:

• Crying: a newborn's first way of communicating hunger or discomfort.
• Cooing: soft vowel sounds ('ooo', 'aah') in the first months.
• Babbling: from about six months, repeated syllables like 'ba-ba-ba' and 'da-da-da'.
• One-word stage: around the first birthday, single words that stand for a whole idea ('Milk!' meaning 'I want milk').
• Two-word stage: around two years, short phrases with only the main words ('Daddy go', 'More juice'), called telegraphic speech because unimportant words are left out.
• After that, sentences grow longer and more grammatical.

How is language learnt?

• B. F. Skinner: language is learnt like other behaviour, through imitation and reinforcement; parents smile and respond when the baby makes the right sounds.
• Noam Chomsky: children are born with an innate ability for language, a universal grammar, which is why every child picks up the language around them so quickly, and why children produce sentences they have never heard.

Bilingualism and multilingualism. In India, speaking more than one language is a way of life. Research shows that being bilingual or multilingual does not confuse children; it helps their thinking, making them more flexible and better at seeing problems from different viewpoints.