The relationship between thought and language has been systematically misunderstood
by almost everyone who has ever written about it. First, the two categories are
incommensurate. Language does not admit of gradation or qualification—something
either is language or it isn't. Thought on the other hand can appear in a variety of forms.
It can be conscious or unconscious. It can be on-line or off-line. It can be directed or
undirected. There is probably only one kind of thought that requires language, that is,
conscious, off-line, directed thought.
Directed thought requires that symbolic units of some kind be manipulated. We tend to
think of these as 'words' because that's what they are when we utter or write our
thoughts. If they remain in the brain they aren't words because there are no words in the
brain, only electrochemical impulses. If we think of these things as 'concepts' we fall
into the trap of thinking that on the one hand there are words and on the other concepts
and the former simply consist of some kind of clothes for the latter. Because again there
aren't 'concepts' in the brain—only electrochemical impulses. It helps if we say that
whether we thinking ot speaking, we are simply manipulating symbolic units (of some
sort).
In order for those symbols to result in any kind of meaning –that is, in order for them to
constitute conscious, off-line, directed thought--they have to be assembled in some
structured kind of way. Syntax—what makes grammatical sentences—is the only way of
structuringsymbolic units. That there are two ways of putting them together—some
mysterious 'language of thought' as opposed to some specific human language—seems
to be incorrect. Basic principles of syntax common to all languages serve to structure
symbolic units BEFORE those units achieve morphological or phonological expression.
The same process that enables us to speak in sentences is what enables us to have the
kind of sirected thoughts that make us human—'I talk, therefore I think'.

CV:
Professor Emeritus, University of Hawaii.
Date of birth: 1926. 1949 BA, Cambridge University; 1976 PhD, Cambridge University;
1972–1976 Associate Professor, 1976–96 Professor, University of Hawaii; 1979 Visiting
Professor at SUNY; 1982 UT Austin; 1986–1987 University of Amsterdam; 1987–1988
University of Provence; Awards: 1992 U. H. Regents Medal for Excellence in Research;
1992 Danz Lecturer, U. of Washington, Seattle; 1995 Landsdowne Scholar, University of
Victoria (Canada); 1997 Fulbright Distinguished Chair, Federico II University, Naples;
1997 Resident Scholar, Rockefeller Center, Bellagio.

- Dynamics of a Creole System (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 224 pp.
- Roots of Language (Ann Arbor, MI: Karoma Press, 1981), 351 pp.
- 'Creole languages', Scientific American 249.1 (1983), pp. 116–122.
- 'The language bioprogram hypothesis', Behavioral and Brain Sciences 7 (1984), pp.
173–221.
- Language and Species (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 297 pp.
- Language and Human Behavior (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995),
180 pp.
- with William Calvin, Lingua ex Machina (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000), 298 pp.