[UA] OT: Thought and Language

[Robin Pfeifer]

Patrick wrote:

"I recently realized that I _don't_ think in words or sentences,
most of the time. If I have a thought, then I often translate it into
words - but the thought has already been formed _before_ the words come into
my head. By the time I finished 'unpacking' the thought into a sentence, I'd
already thought it, and I'm aware that the language level is redundant (at
least for internal thought)."

But can you actually stop putting the thoughts into word form? When I
formulate a thought in my head I am usually fully aware that I had the idea
in image or associative form before that, but it gets real only when put
into words. In fact I can picture a role-playing plot (see how I got that
on-topic at least halfway?) in my head like a film but I can fix it and
actually present it only after I have clothed it in words. What's more, I
can only pre-invent a plot so far before I have to write it down so I can go
on from there. If I don't perform that 'memory dump' I just go in circles
and circles, always repeating the same ideas with only slight permutations.

Robin



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