Abstract
There is no stage in a child’s development, notes Wittgenstein,3 when language is used to communicate but not to think. Grammar and syntax are rules for thinking, which philosophers call epistemology. Gregory Bateson explains “in the West our language presents us with a linear causal view of the world. Language continually asserts by the syntax of subject and predicate that ‘things’ somehow ‘have’ qualities and attributes.”4
... language is itself the vehicle of thought.
Thinking and language belong together. A child learns a language in such way that it suddenly begins to think in it.
-Ludwig Wittgenstein
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References
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Segal, L. (2001). The Difficulties of Language. In: The Dream of Reality. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-0115-8_3
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