I think it’s possible that internal language did exist before it could be vocalised. That is, before we evolved the necessary structures in the throat to make words, we were thinking according to basic grammatical rules e.g subject-verb-object. Words in human language are like labels for internal concepts, and those internal concepts would have existed before language was a thing.
I think you’re right. I want to add though that those internal concepts aren’t nebulous things, they’re themselves made up of other dimensions of understanding. Like, i have the word “dog”, and I have an internal concept of a dog, but how exactly is “dog” conceptualized? In terms of senses. It looks like this, feels like this, makes these sounds. And it’s not only the classic 5/6 senses, it’s also time (it acts/moves like this) and hormones and other chemicals (it makes me feel this). Language (it’s called this) is a higher level abstraction of those, but when push comes to shove a word is just one more connection/correlation with dozens of other connected sensations that together form that internal concept
I think it’s possible that internal language did exist before it could be vocalised. That is, before we evolved the necessary structures in the throat to make words, we were thinking according to basic grammatical rules e.g subject-verb-object. Words in human language are like labels for internal concepts, and those internal concepts would have existed before language was a thing.
I think you’re right. I want to add though that those internal concepts aren’t nebulous things, they’re themselves made up of other dimensions of understanding. Like, i have the word “dog”, and I have an internal concept of a dog, but how exactly is “dog” conceptualized? In terms of senses. It looks like this, feels like this, makes these sounds. And it’s not only the classic 5/6 senses, it’s also time (it acts/moves like this) and hormones and other chemicals (it makes me feel this). Language (it’s called this) is a higher level abstraction of those, but when push comes to shove a word is just one more connection/correlation with dozens of other connected sensations that together form that internal concept