Language, Cognition, and Lexicon: How Words Shape Thought

Introduction: What Comes First, Language or Concept?

What comes first — language, or the concepts that generate a language? This question has divided and perplexed linguists for decades. Recent advances in the field of cognitive science have been able to illuminate this debate, although they provide no final answers. In fact, they may make the question even more complex. What constitutes a language, as well as the mechanisms — such as culture and cognition — that affect and may or may not produce language itself, still remain something of a mystery.

Defining Language and Lexicon

Although the term is less familiar than "language," the notion of a lexicon cannot be separated from the definition of a language. A language may be defined as an arbitrary and dynamic system of expression characterized by an enclosed but permeable vocabulary, grammar, and conceptual system. "Every language has a different vocabulary, but every language provides the grammatical mechanisms for combining its stock of words to express an open-ended range of concepts. A lexicon is defined as a bridge between a language and the knowledge expressed in that language" (Sowa 2005). In short, a lexicon answers the question of how words and sounds are used to transmit concepts in a coherent fashion — through a medium that limits and defines what types of words, sounds, and grammatical structures are acceptable.

Key Features of Language

The key features of a language are that it is characterized by a system of sounds, forms, and meanings, and that it is capable of changing to some degree with its environment. These sounds are arbitrary, no matter how well-defined and distinct the rules of grammar in the language's lexicon. For example, there is no intrinsic quality to the nature of what English speakers conceptualize as the human hand. In Russian, the corresponding word ruka extends all the way to the elbow — the concept and the word are different, and the boundary defining the appendage is entirely arbitrary. Because of the structure of the language, a Russian speaker is cognitively unlikely to think of the portion of the arm from wrist to fingertips as a separate body part, because the language does not define it as separate. In contrast, hand in English and mano in Italian constitute different words, yet both define the same portion of the arm, further demonstrating that sounds are not intrinsic to objects (Sowa 2005). The fact that both the English and Italian speaker perceives that same body part as self-contained is not due to the nature of the physical world, but to their use of language.

For a language to have coherent form or grammar it must also be systematic — the order of words and sentences must mean something, or communication would dissolve into nonsense. "The grammar of a language determines how the conceptual structures are linearized as strings of words in a sentence. English and Chinese, for example, put the subject first, the verb in the middle, and the object at the end for an SVO word order. Irish and Biblical Hebrew are VSO languages that put the verb first. Latin and Japanese are SOV languages that put the verb at the end" (Sowa 2005). In other words, a subject does not innately precede a verb, even though English speakers are accustomed to this formation.

Word order, however, is not the only component of grammar. "The grammar also determines how the units of meaning, called morphemes, are combined to form words. Chinese is an extreme example of an analytic language in which almost all the morphemes can be used as stand-alone words. German is an agglutinative language, which forms compound words like Lebensversicherungsgesellschaftsangestellter (life insurance company employee). Old English was an agglutinative language like German, but as it evolved into modern English, it became almost as analytic as Chinese" (Sowa 2008). Some ungrammatical phrases can, of course, still be understood depending upon the language. In others, such as Latin, where word placement carries significant meaning, fundamental misinterpretations can occur through improper use of grammar even when the vocabulary is largely consistent with the intended meaning.

Although it is rule-bound, language must also be dynamic, because it exists within culture and is shaped by the interactions of human beings in particular environments performing particular activities. This is the inherent distinction between human and animal communication: "Language has a recursive grammar capable of generating a potentially infinite set of expressions" (Szabó 2004). Perhaps the most widely cited example of the interaction between environment and language is the multiplicity of words for snow among Arctic peoples, describing varieties of snow that go unnoticed and unnamed in other environments. Cultural shifts also cause new words to be incorporated: "Since French, Chinese, and Indian cuisines are based on very different ingredients, methods of preparation, and cooking utensils, the people who cook and eat each kind of food use words for it that have no counterparts in the other cultures" (Sowa 2005). Yet wok has since been incorporated into English, just as words like Internet reflect shifts in cultural interaction, new technology, and new concepts. As Sowa notes, "Cultural and conceptual shifts occur across time as well as space. A book on science or business, for example, is easier to translate from modern English to modern Japanese than from modern English to the language of Shakespeare" (Sowa 2004).

Conclusion: Language as a Biological, Cultural, and Cognitive System

Meaning varies and shifts — some would say as the world shifts, others would say as language itself grows and generates new meanings — while almost all would agree that the drive to communicate and to make consistent and coherent meanings endures across all segments of the species. While a stroke may damage a human brain's ability to convey language, and while different individuals may show different levels of ability in using language effectively or learning foreign systems of communication, the innate, structured, yet dynamic nature of human language persists. Language exists on a biological, linguistic, and cultural level, although the degree to which these factors produce and affect language and meaning remains a subject of ongoing scholarly debate.