In On the Genesis of Thought and Language, linguist Alexey Koshelev
explores fundamental questions of how human concepts arise in a
child, why concepts appear in a child before words, the genesis of
language, and why there are so many languages. Chapter One
introduces the fundamental dichotomy "visual (exogenous) vs.
functional (endogenous)" cognitive units; these units are used to
give non-verbal definitions of mental representations of various
objects, actions, and situations. In particular, definitions of
such concepts as GLASS, CHAIR, BANANA, TREE, LAKE, RUN, and some
others are given. Chapter Two discusses how children form concepts,
hierarchical relationships, and propositions (conceptual
'utterances'). It is shown that the initial units of the child's
representation of the world are pre-conceptual cognitive
units-mental representations of whole situations. In the course of
two consecutive cycles in the child's cognitive development, these
units transform into (a) primary notions-object and motor concepts,
and (b) binary role relationships. Together, they constitute the
elementary language of thought which, in the process of thinking,
is used to build conceptual structures-propositions. It is further
demonstrated that, immediately after the formation of thought, the
child begins to develop his native language in which concrete and
motor concepts become initial meanings of nouns and verbs, while
propositions become the meanings of the child's expressions. The
chapter concludes with a contrastive analysis of the proposed
approach and Aristotle's and Chomsky's views on thought and
language. Chapter Three analyzes how a community's culture affects
its language. It is demonstrated that the progress of a community,
the main constituent of the civilizational component of its
culture, enhances the development of the content component of
language by extending the range of its lexical and grammatical
meanings. In the context of this analysis, Daniel Everett's (2008)
hypothesis that culture affects language structure is discussed. In
the subsequent sections, models of the development of human and
social activity are offered. These models comprise three
components: Activity (main component), Thought, and Language
(auxiliary components that ensure the successful realization of
activities). The models are illustrated with examples of some
concrete societies.
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