Where do language & thought meet?

Word meaning is an integral part of word as such & thus it belongs to the realm of language as much as to the realm of the thought. Word meaning is a unit of language as a system of signs & it is a unit of speech. Generalization is a verbal act of thought. Every word is already a generalization. To become communicable a human experience must be included in a certain category. The higher forms of human intercourse are possible only because man’s thought reflects the results of categorization.

Conclusion: language is not a nomenclature that provides labels for pre-existing categories. It generates is own categories.

Word meaning is a unit of both generalizing thought & social interchange & it is of great value for the study of thought & language. In word meaning thought & language unite into verbal thought.

Language & thought

Thought is not merely expressed in words: it comes into existence through them. Every thought moves, grows, develops, fulfils a function, solves a problem. This flow of thought occurs in an inner movement through a series of planes.

A series of planes:

1. the plane of external speech

2. the word meaning plane

3. the plane of inner speech

4. the plane of thought itself

The plane of external speech – in mastering external speech the child starts from sounds & words, than 2-3 words, he processes from the part from the whole. The 1^st word of a child is a whole sentence. Semantically the child starts from the whole & later begins to master separate linguistic units & to divide his undifferentiated thoughts into differentiated units. The external & semantic aspects of speech develop in the opposite directions – one from the particular from the whole, from word to sentence, & the other from the whole to the particular, from sentence to word.

The plane of inner speech – inner speech is not “speech minus sound”. It has an entirely separate speech function. It is a specific formation with its own laws & complex relations to the other forms of speech activity.

Special characteristics & functions of inner speech:

1. Egocentric speech is a stage of development preceding inner speech. Both fulfill intellectual functions: their structures are similar: one changes into the other. The main distinguishing trait is its peculiar syntax: compared with external speech, inner speech appears disconnected & incomplete. With syntax & sound reduced to a minimum meaning is in the foreground. Inner speech is to language extent thinking in pure meanings. The specific semantic structure of inner speech contributes to abbreviation. Inner speech works with semantics & not phonetics.

Semantic peculiarities of inner speech

1. Superiority of the sense of a word over its meaning: the sense of a word is the sum of all the psychological events aroused in our consciousness by the word. It is a dynamic, complex whole, which has several zones of unequal stability. Meaning is only one of the zones of sense, but the most stable & precise one. A word acquires its sense from the context in which it appears; in different contexts it changes its sense. As for meaning, it remains stable throughout the change of sense. The dictionary meaning of a word is no more that a stone in the edifice of sense, a potentiality that finds diversified realization in speech. A word in context means both more & less than the same word in isolation: more, because it acquires new content; less: because its meaning is limited & narrowed by the context. The sense of a word is a complex, mobile phenomenon; it changes in different minds & situations & is almost unlimited. The word derives its sense from the sentence. The sentence gets its sense from the paragraph, the paragraph – from the text, the text – from the book, the book – from all the works of the author. Words in a sentence are relatively independent from each other. The predominance of sense over meaning, of sentence of a word, of context over sentence is the rule.

2. Word combination is a kind of agglutination. As egocentric speech of the child approaches inner speech the child uses agglutination more as a way of forming compound words to express complex ideas.

3. The way in which senses of words combine & unite: the senses of different words flow into one another – literally “influence” one another – so that the earlier ones modify the later ones. The title of a literary work expresses its content to a much greater degree than the name of a work of art or the title of a music track. The words appear throughout the book, but, through the ultimate relationship these words acquire simpli-significance.