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2.1. Limitations of linguistics :
In the earlier chapter we presented some models for the description of acquisition of language by children. A closer examination of the models would indicate that linguists' procedures are restricted to a description and explanation, if any, of what linguists call structures - specifically abstractions of language. A linguist studying language acquisition by children is interested in how a child acquires the structures of language, be they phonological, syntactic or semantic. He observes the acquisition of language and records the emergence of structures - one word utterances, multiple-word utterances, acquisition and differentiation of grammatical categories, transformations, etc. He is aware that there is a correlation between the physiological, cognitive and linguistic maturational milestones. He is aware also that language comes to be used progressively for expressing what we call in common parlance as one's concepts, thinking, etc. Yet he is preoccupied (for his own justifiable reasons) with the study of emergence of linguistic structures. He ignores the concomitant developments linked with the emergence of language and in the process, the genesis of thought, reasoning and logical systems is never touched upon by him, or even when touched upon, he fails to weave them into a coherent theory embracing the whole gamut of language, thought and reasoning. Even the generative grammarian who goes beyond other theorists of language in depth is no exception to it in the sense the emergence of language is not linked with the emergence of thought processes even in his theory. As emphasized above, this does not mean that a linguist closes his eyes with regard to thought, concept, reality and logic and their relations to language as a system. In fact the developments in related fields have pushed linguists to take positions and to restate their views on the subject. However, linguists are interested more in the analysis of the system (language) than in the uses of the system, among which they include thinking also.

Language is sued for interpersonal and intra-individual communication. Intra-individual communication is as vital as the interpersonal communication A good part of one's own life is led in the intra-individual plane and a good part of one's own language use is on this plane. Hence the mechanisms and the characteristics of intra-individual communication are as important as the mechanisms and characteristics of interpersonal communication. However, linguists seem to be interested only in the form, content, mechanisms of the interpersonal communication as exemplified in verbal language and only a passing reference, if at all there is any, is made on the form, content, mechanisms and use of the intra-individual communication as exemplified in 'silent' language. The genetic relationship between the two and the influence of one on the other hardly form the subject matter of linguistics.

This neglect, if at all is to be considered a neglect rather than something dictated by common agreement among the practitioners about the scope of their field, is found even in psychology to some extent. Both psychologists and linguists shun subjective reporting done by the objects of study. In studies on thought processes one has to resort to subjective reporting in addition to others. Subjective reporting does not throw light on the ongoing processes and tends to be edited versions of what went on. However, developmental psychologists do not fail to note the thought processes and link them with language and logic.

2.2. Thinking :
Thinking is an unobservable, covert behaviour. There is no need for the immediate presence of the stimuli for one to indulge in thinking. It can be a self-generated process. One indulges in this to achieve some desired outcome or solution. Motor activity is not necessary for thinking. It is the central nervous system that accommodates this mental activity.

In everyday life thinking refers to reasoning, employing one's mind rationally and objectively in evaluating or dealing with a given situation. Thinking refers also to having conscious mind, remembering experiences, to call something to one's conscious mind, to invent or conceive something and to analyze or evolve rationally.

Thinking is and is not dependent on language. We find that organisms without language also indulge in thinking. Deaf children without language acquire concepts. They compare magnitudes, remember sequences and associations, and solve simple problems involving forms, colours, etc. These performances are generally well above the level of cognitive functioning that we find in animals. These findings suggest strongly that there can be a kind of thought without language.

Normal children in pre-language stage exhibit complex thinking and are able to solve problems. Once the child acquires a language, he is able to describe his actions and use an important characteristics of language, namely, variation in time and space. He is in a position to use the language characteristic, prevarication also; these two characteristics enable the learner to reconstitute the past and to anticipate the future. In both these cases the objects are not present. Further he is able to anticipate actions to the point where sometimes actions are replaced by words and are never actually performed. Thought becomes part of the communication and language comes to reinforce individual thinking with a vast system of concepts. The mastery of words begins to facilitate the mastery of concepts.

There is general agreement among the psychologists about the existence of pre-linguistic thought and language without thought. But there is no agreement among them either about the nature of genetic relationship between the two, about the role of language in thought process or about the order of emergence. We shall present here first of all the relationship between language and thought as suggested by a few leading linguists and present two approaches to language and thought by psychologists and finally indicate the role of language and thought in relation to reality.

2.3. Concept :
Before we proceed on the lines suggested we have to deal with an important area which is closely related to thinking, namely, concept. Thinking and concept are inter-related and one can consider thinking as a covert process which largely involves the manipulation of concepts. Here, we must caution our readers that it is indeed difficult to define what a concept is. Concept may be taken as internal representation of classes or categories of experience an organism undergoes. These experiences can be either the direct response to aspects of the external environment or responses to other experiences. As experience can be infinite and diverse, the concepts can also be diverse and classified in infinite ways.

Human organism is endowed with adequate capacity to categorize and classify the environment. A child acquires or forms his concepts in his infancy involving the objects, sensations, sounds and feelings. These concepts are based on the perceptual invariants of the experience the child undergoes. A child in the process of his acquisition of language identifies the names for the categories of experience he undergoes. These names are socially reinforced in the environment and begin to form the first concepts expressed through the medium of language. The categorization and classification include the identification of partial similarities between the events also. The child thus will also have a repertoire of partially similar concepts. As the concepts are termed as internal representation of experiences, it leads us to postulate that some concepts may be formed out of other concepts already internalized, usually on the basis of partial similarities existing between them. This may allow us to account for whatever novelty or creativity we may find in the acquisition of concepts. And yet a new concept may be formed which has no partial similarity or association with others.

The concepts differ in their degree of novelty and complexity in reference to their acquisition by an individual. Sometimes repeated occurrences are necessary to identify a concept; in several cases an individual acquires a concept just through an ordinary verbal formulation, through reading or writing. Many concepts are identified, learned and recognized in the latter manner. Many a time we learn the concepts without being aware of the process. Psychologists usually define concept learning in terms of our ability to recognize instances and our ability to formulate descriptions or to construct the instances of the concept. When translated into linguistics, the linguistic sign comes very close to the concept of psychologists.

A chief medium for acquisition and the demonstration of the acquisition of concepts is language. Verbal formulation of the concepts already acquired can lead to further acquisition and sharpening of older ones. However, the concept formation studies of psychologists do not usually emphasize the importance of verbal formulation. The reason may be the infinite ways in which a concept may be expressed through language, or an assumption that using language for concept formation studies may not allow one to isolate the concepts as such from the acquisition and use of concepts through language medium.

Earlier psychologists believed that we can identify a normal order of concept acquisition. With the layman there is a belief that concrete concepts can be more easily learned than abstract concepts such as number. But this belief is not shared by psychologists any more. They find that in the place of concrete vs abstract division one should look for the complexity in terms of dimensions involved in acquiring a concept. The disjunctive concept is the most difficult one. Following Carroll (1964) a conjunctive concept may be defined as one for which a specified combination of attributes is criterial (for example, red figures with borders); a disjunctive concept is defined as one for which any of two or more alternative combinations of attributes is criterial (either red figure or one with two borders); and a relational concept is defined as one in which a specified relation between attributes is criterial (fewer figures than borders).

Carroll suggests that four kinds of strategies or cognitive styles are adopted by subjects in solving problems of concept attainment presented to them. These are (i) simultaneous scanning, (ii) successive scanning, (iii) conservative focusing and (iv) focus gambling. In simultaneous scanning the subject makes a systematic trial of alternative hypothesis, taking into account the information obtained from each success or failure. In successive screening the subject makes a trial of only one hypothesis at a time. Furthermore the successive trials do not take advantage of the success or failure of the earlier trials. As a result some trials become inconsistent and/or redundant. In the conservative focusing the subject makes a trial of conservative variation. The subject selects some focus or positive instance. In focus gambling, the subject makes drastic changes of focus. These changes are made in the hope that such a gambling will somehow lead to the attainment of criterial attributes by a process of elimination.We shall present different approaches towards concept formation below. It suffices to say that concepts are the internal representations of the classes and categories of experience and that concepts are close to what linguists call the signs.

2.4. Linguistic approach to thought :

2.4.1. General remarks :

Although linguists have been mainly concerned with the description of linguistic structures, as suggested above, several leading figures among them have shown considerable interest in the relationship between language, thought, concept formation and reality. Their concern has been mainly of speculative nature raising questions such as 'can we think without language', 'how are language and thought related,' 'is our thinking influenced by the structure of our language,' and so on.

In their speculations about language, thought, concept and reality, linguists have been influenced by psychological theories of thinking, concept formation, perception and cognition current in their times. They have been influenced also by theories on neurophysiological mechanisms underlying the use of language in all these speculations. However, linguists do not go into the details of the mechanisms of the thought processes. They seem to concern themselves with making statements by way of emphasizing the role played by verbal symbols in thought processes and concept formation.

The linguists realize that many of our concepts are given verbal labels. They are aware at the same time that the verbal labels need not necessarily pre-propose the formation and use of concepts which have reality in the outside world. For instance, linguists are aware that the gender concept they finding human languages need not be real in the external world. They find that the natural gender distinction is different from the grammatical gender concept in a language like Hindi. They also find that language has certain non-referential uses in which the communication of ideas ('ties of union') is created by the mere exchange of words. These expressions are there to fulfil a social function and not to convey the symbolic meanings of the words that constitute the utterance. Such utterances are considered by some as revealing the fact that language need not function always as a means of transmission of thought. On many an occasion expressions are uttered which are not the result of any thinking. These have no intention or discernible effect on the listeners, activating their thinking mechanism.

Eventhough linguists of yore had given appellations and definitions to some grammatical categories and constructs as though these were the main mechanisms of thought processes, as for instance, subjunctive mood was considered a thought mood and abstracts as thought names, the current trend is to avoid such appellations and definitions, taking generally a formal view of language. In what follows here we present the ideas of a few linguists with regard to the inter-relationship between language, thought, concept formation and reality.

2.4.2.Leonard Bloomfield (1935 : 28) considers thinking as talking to oneself. As children talking to ourselves aloud. Soon our elders correct us and this characterization Bloomfield seems to suggest a progression from the audible language to the suppressed inaudible ones through a gradual change from voice to whisper to sub-vocal mechanisms. Bloomfield recognizes that we think before we act and that we think in words. Thinking in words is defined as soundless movement of the vocal organs, taking the place of speech movements, but not audible to other people. This thinking is nothing but sub-vocal speech.

Bloomfield follows in general the position taken by the leading behaviourist psychologist of his time, J.B. Watson. Watson considers thinking as an implicit language habit and that children make the transition from overt to whispered and to implicit language. These three forms may go on together from the start also. The environment of the child does not force him to a rapid shift from explicit to implicit language.

Watson further considered that thinking is silent talking, but not all thought is laryngeal. Thought is a highly integrated bodily activity which can be carried out even without laryngeal involvement, so essential for explicit, oral language. The position that thought is a highly integrated bodily is in contrast with the psychophysical dualism which considered language as the expression of thought through the use of speech sounds. However in most of our thinking we use articulate speech or even lip speech. Further thought is a constituent part of every adjustment process. ' It is not different in essence from tennis- playing, swimming or any other overt activity except that is hidden from ordinary observation and is more complex and at the same time more abbreviated a far as its parts are concerned than even the bravest of us could dream of' (Waston 1919: 325). Waston emphasizes that we should not abstract language, overt or implicit or other implicit thought processes from their general setting in bodily integration as a whole Waston identifies four forms of thought: i) logical, as exemplified in the various propositions and syllogisms in logic. The logical form of thought is generally resorted to when the individual goes out ' in society, to debate or to begin his legal training. There is no more necessity for an individual to think in logical form than there is for him to shave, bathe and dress according to a rigidly specified routine' (p. 329), ii) routine type of work involves little thought, iii) thought for constructive work. This involves trial and error. In this there is repeated use of implicit laryngeal mechanism and before the final word phrasing representing the completion of the adjustment occurs ("conclusion") devious useless word acts are executed. iv) Play and emotional forms of thought activity are involved in creative work.

Louis Hjelmslev: Hjelmslev suggests that we can abstract from different languages the common factor. This common factor is the purport, common signification or the thought itself conveyed and found as the common factor of all the languages. This is an amorphous mass-just as the sand and just as the cloud which can be put into different moulds and different shapes, thought itself can be structured differently in different languages.

J.R.Firth: Firth (1964) considers that meaning a property of the situational context of people, things, events as well as the uttered words of a speaker. The uttered words are not the only important factor in the correct characterization of the meaning of anything. The words become part of habitual action. 'The only meanings they can have are the behaviour patterns, of which they are the coordinating function' (p.177) . Firth identifies the habitual use of speech and thus suggests that not all our utterances are the product of thought process. He notices the controversy as to whether each visual perception (such as reading) is accompanied by suppressed articulation or is it something psychic which controls and conducts the whole process or is it possible to have an idea of the sound b without feeling some movement etc. He reports of an experiment in which two American psychologists attempted an experimental investigation of the movements of the tongue in internal speech or verbal thought. Such movements when they occurred corresponded to movements in overt speech of the same words only in 4.4 percent. He even suggests an experiment for the reader to try it on himself: We should hold our lip down from the teeth or the tip of our tongue out of our mouths between the thumb and finger, and repeat silently to ourselves, 'Peter, Piper picked a pack, etc'., or 'Baa, baa, black sheep.' 'Does this interfere with the sound or feel of the words, or is there some articulatory discomfort?.'

Edward Sapir:Among American linguists Sapir is more concerned with the relationship between language, thought and reality. Language is primarily an auditory system of symbols which can be transferred into a motor system. The motor processes are a means leading to auditory perception in both speaker and hearer. For the communication to be considered as successfully conducted, the auditory perceptions should further be transferred into the appropriate and intended flow of imagery or thought or both. Thus the course of communication process may undergo endless modifications for transformations into equivalent systems, not losing its essential formal characteristics. Abbreviations of the speech processes involved in thinking is the most important of all these modifications. There are many different forms of thought, according to the structural or functional peculiarities of the individual mind. In the least modified form of thought one talks to oneself or one thinks aloud. The speaker and the hearer are one and the same. Another form of thought consists of all the varieties of silent speech and of normal thinking in which the sounds of speech are not articulated at all.

Sapir (1921) considers that auditory imagery and the correlated motor imagery which leads to articulation are 'by whatever devious ways we follow the process, the historic fountain-head of all speech and of all thinking.' As regards concept it is 'the convenient capsule of thought'. The speech element 'house' is the symbol, not of a single perception, not decided on the basis of the notion about the object, but it embraces thousands of distinct experiences. A concept will be and should be capable of taking in and accounting for many more such individual experiences. The actual flow of speech may be considered as a record of the setting of these concepts (single significant elements of speech) into mutual relations.

As regards the questions raised often whether thought is possible without speech and whether speech and thought are but two facets of the same psychic process, Sapir suggests that the flow of language itself is not always indicative of thoughts. Though the typical linguistic elements replace a concept, the use to which language is put is not always or not even mainly conceptual. In ordinary life one is not much concerned with concepts, but with concrete particularities and specific relations. Most of our day today sentences have no conceptual significance whatever, even though each element in a sentence defines a separate concept or conceptual. In ordinary life one is not much concerned with concepts, but with concrete particularities and specific relations. Most of our day-to-day sentences have no conceptual significance whatever, even though each element in a sentence defines a separate concept or conceptual relation or both combined. Such uses to which language is put make language seem like a dynamo capable of generating enough power to run an elevator, operated almost exclusively to feed an electric door bell: Language is an instrument capable of a whole range of psychic uses. The flow of language parallels that of the inner content of consciousness, on different levels ranging from the state of mind that is dominated by particular images to that in which abstract concepts and their relations are alone at the focus of attention and which is ordinary termed reasoning. The outward form of language is constant for every one to use, but its inner meaning, its psychic value or intensity will be different for different individuals depending upon their attention, selective interest and their general development. Thought must be defined as 'the highest latent or potential content of speech, the content that is obtained by interpreting each of the elements in the flow of language as possessed of its very fullest conceptual value'. Thus language and thought are not strictly coterminous. 'At best language can but be the outward fact of thought on the highest, most generalized, level of symbolic expression. To put our view point somewhat differently language is primarily a pre-rational function. It humbly works up to the thought that is latent in, that may eventually be read into, its classifications and forms; it is not, as is generally but natively assumed the final label put upon the finished thought'.

Sapir assumes that language arose prerationally. We do not know how it arose and on what level of mental activity was man at that time. The highly developed system of speech symbols could not have been brought out before the genesis of distinct concepts and of thinking. Sapir would have it that the thought processes set in along with the beginning of linguistic expression, 'as a kind of psychic over-flow'. A concept gets its individuality and status or life only when it has a distinctive linguistic embodiment. In a sense language and thought grooves are one and the same. The infinite variability of linguistic form is simply the infinite variability of the actual process of thought. A manifest form of a language is nothing more nor less than a collective art of thought.

Jean Piaget on Thought, Concept and Language:

Introductory remarks:

Jean Piaget is a great developmental psychologist and is behind the upsurge of interest in the systematic study of thinking for several decades now. His studies concentrate on how the thinking of children and logical systems develop and also on the structure of mental development in the child. His work is characterized generally as genetic epistemology, seeking answers for epistemological questions through the developmental study of the child. Epistemology is defined as a branch of philosophy that investigates the origin, nature, methods and limits of human knowledge. Piaget's theory is a theory of equilibration, explaining the balancing processes between the social and physical environment and the organism's need to conserve its structural systems. We may call Piaget's theory as forming a new field of experimental philosophy.

Piaget's work may be easy to read but difficult indeed to interpret. His research has had several phases, some of which may seem to be in conflict with each other. Piaget finds that there are parallels between the thought of children and the philosophical systems, that philosophical systems derive ideas implicit in the thinking of children and that there is partial constancy of cognitive structuring over long periods in human history. Children construct ideas different from those entertained by the adults about the world around them and are thus in a necessity to regulate their own growth with that of the adult society. Here the growth of knowledge is conceived not as a simple learning process, but as a giving up of erroneous ideas for correct ones and/or as a transformation of ideas into a higher and complex level. Mental growth is the result of the interaction between innate structures and the influence of the environment. However, Piaget would not emphasize or exaggerate the role of innate structures, but would relate them to the genesis of the phenomenon, all the time emphasizing the universal laws of nature.

Piaget traces in his later works the origins of the structures of knowing to the sensori-motor coordination of infants. Sensori-motor coordination of infants is the forerunner of both the form and content of adult thought. Piaget's major interest has been the study of the development of logico-mathematical thought from early childhood to adolescence. It is but natural that the works of a great and prolific mind like Jean Piaget's has changes in emphasis. Hence when one refers to Piaget's position, date becomes very important. Here we base our presentation of Piaget's position mainly on his works of 1959, and 1964 which contain works undertaken in some instances some decades before their publication in the above forms.

Jean Piaget and Innateness:

Logic forms the corner stone of Piaget's genetic epistemology. Logic pervades all the phenomena. It governs the mind, biological processes and the physical world. Logical operations help the child to reconstruct and understand the physical, social and biological phenomena. This does not mean that logic is innate in the child. In fact Piaget (1964 : 119) takes the position that logic is not innate in the child and that the child constitutes logical structures little by little in course of his development. Logical structures are constructed gradually in connection with language and social change.

Piaget (1964) finds that recourse to innate factors merely passes the problems on to biology and that biology at present is not in a position to throw light on this. We must make a distinction between the characteristics acquired through heredity or endogenous origin (originating within the body) or heredity stemming from ancestral acquisitions as a function of environment and of experience. Piaget, relying on an experiment he conducted decades ago, concludes that there is intervention of environmental action on the reflex mechanism and even on morphogenesis (Piaget 1964 : 118).

This experiment was aimed at the analysis of sensori-motor adaptations of the Limnae stagnalis. The Limnae stagnalis is a fresh water mollusk. This has an elongated shape in the marshes. But in large lakes with smooth and pebbly banks, it has a contracted and globular shape, because of the movements it has to make during its growth to resist the agitation of the water. Piaget, first of all, established that this shape is not a simple phenotype, but inherited with stability over six to seven generations. This was demonstrated using pure and cross breeding in the aquarium. Among the two types of Limnae stagnalis the contracted form can live anywhere. Piaget transplanted the contracted type of the species several decades ago to a marsh where its descendants are still prospering and have conserved the elongated shape found in the lakes. Such a survival cannot be explained by chance alone. The formation of this race, the contracted shape, was achieved as adaptation to the movements of the water in large lakes. Piaget concludes that no explanation is possible in this instance other than the intervention of environmental action on the reflex mechanism and on morphogenesis.

The 'innate' sensori-motor behaviours are perhaps the result of the latter category, resulting from environmental influence. Further maturation, a point usually given in support of innateness, is never independent. It depends on function-exercises the organism undergoes. Exercise can accelerate or retard certain forms of maturation. Maturation of nervous system opens up possibilities for behaviours and logical operation, depending upon physical experiences such as manipulation of objects and social conditions such as exchange of information. But in itself maturation is not a sufficient condition for the emergence of logical operations.

How logical structures are formed :

The logical structures are formed when actions are exercised upon objects. The objects are governed by universal logical rules and when actions are performed on objects, the child gets exposed to logical rules. This is the source from which a child draws his logic. The actions performed on objects may change the object and these changes constitute new sources of knowledge. We act upon nature in order to be productive but in the process we are governed by the law of nature.

Just as the universal laws applicable to objects help the emergence of logical operations, social laws or necessity come to play their role in the constitution of logical structures. The coordination of interpersonal action through work and verbal exchange contributes to the constitution of logical structures. What one person does is completed by another through addition, correspondence and so on. Arguments and disagreements give rise to negations, inverse operations, etc.

Governing the whole rubric of logical structures is the factor of equilibration which is dialectical in nature. Every structure acquired creates a disequilibrium which is brought to equilibrium, when the acquired structure is organized into an equal reversible structure. Each new level of equilibrium is preparatory to a new disequilibrium. A process of thesis, antithesis and synthesis is in constant operation in the constitution of logical structures.

Developmental schedule of logical structures :

While dealing with the formation of intelligence and of logic operations, which is his major area of research, Piaget distinguishes four age periods (Piaget: 1964: 116-142). The first one is the age period from birth to one and a half to two years which is a sensori-motor period prior to language. During this period there is no logic and no operation, but there is preparation for reversibility operations on structures. There is also construction of invariants. In the early stage the child does not show any searching behaviour comes into existence demonstrating the acquisition of an invariant-permanent object in a fixed and proximal space.

During the second period which is between two and seven to eight years one finds the emergence of symbolic function through processes such as symbolic play, deferred imitation, and mental imagery as well as the unison of thought with language. The actions achieved through the sensori-motor plane so far undergo a progressive internalization and form the basis of unison of thought and language. Reversibility of operations, hall mark of full-fledged logical operations and thought processes, is achieved at the end of this period in certain areas. For instance, a child is given two balls of modeling clay of the same weight and dimensions. One ball is transformed into a cake shape and the child is asked (a) if the balls still contain the same amount of clay, (b) if they are the same weight and (c) if the volume is still the same. The correct answer to the first question is obtained when the child is about seven to eight years; for the second when he is around nine to ten years and for the last around the age of eleven to twelve.

Egocentric and socialized speech :

It is during the second period that the major part of language acquisition takes place. Piaget (1959) divides the functions of child language into two large groups, namely, egocentric and socialized. The child engages himself in egocentric speech to talk to himself or to talk for himself without bothering to know to whom he is speaking or whether he is being listened to. The chief characteristics of egocentric speech are thus talking to oneself and taking no care to place oneself at the view point of others.

Piaget divides egocentric speech into three categories namely repetition, monologue an dual or collective monologue. In the repetition, child repeats the words and syllables for the pleasure of talking. In the monologue, the child talks to himself as if he were thinking aloud. No one is addressed. In the collective monologue of children, we find that each child sticks to his own idea and does not expect the other to understand or to respond. The other children serve only as stimulus.

The socialized speech is divided into five categories, namely, adapted information, criticism, commands, requests and threats, and questions and answers. In the adapted information, the child talks to specified information and exchanges his thoughts with others. The child tries to see the point of view of others. The category criticism includes all remarks of the child about the work or behaviour of others. Definite interaction among children characterizes the category of commands, requests and threats. Questions and answers also need definite interaction and as such are considered to be socialized speech.

It is difficult to say to whether egocentric speech precedes the socialized speech. The observation indicates that both the forms exist side by side, though there is a clear predominance of egocentrism. In course of time certain forms of egocentric speech, especially monologue, begins to make a gradual disappearance. Piaget finds that 'both spring from the undifferentiated state where cries and words accompany action, and then tend to prolong it and both react one upon the other at the very outset of their development.

Egocentrism is an important milestone and embraces all child's behaviour. The egocentrism is in the first place ascribed to a combination of external circumstances such as absence of knowledge, being restricted to one small place, environment and social group. In the second place, egocentrism 'as a mode of spontaneous apperception, which is common to every individual and as such needs no preliminary, consists of a kind of primary adjustment of thought, an intellectual simplicity of mind in the sense of absence of all intellectual relativity and relational system of reference', (Piaget 1959 : 270). Piaget (1959 : 268) defines intellectual egocentrism in child as 'the assemblage of all the different pre-critical and consequently pre-objective cognitive attitudes of the child's mind.' Egocentrism is not a conscious phenomenon. Egocentrism is no longer egocentrism, when it becomes self conscious. It is not also a phenomenon of social behaviour, as behaviour is an indirect manifestation of egocentrism but does not constitute it. Piaget considers egocentrism of the child as an illusion of perspective, a kind of systematic and unconscious illusion.

There is qualitative difference between child's and adult's thoughts. The adult can keep to himself his thoughts whereas the child, up to an age limit, probably somewhere around seven, cannot keep to himself the thoughts which enter his mind. This does not mean that the child socializes his thoughts more than the adult does. The child's verbalization of his thought accompanies and reinforces his activity. The adult's thinking is social even when his thoughts are most personal and private, because the adult has in his mind's eye his fellow being and places himself at their point of view. On the contrary the child speaks to this neighbours for the most part as if he were alone and rarely places himself at the point of view of his listeners. He speaks as if he were thinking aloud. In a nutshell, 'the adult thinks socially even when he is alone, and the child, under seven, thinks egocentrically, even in the society of others'.

The reasons for the egocentric speech and thought are to be found in the type of social intercourse between the children of less than seven or eight years and in the fact that language used in the fundamental activity of the child, namely, play, is one of gestures, movement and mimicry as much as words. There is no sustained social intercourse between the children of less than seven or eight. The type of children's society under normal conditions does not display division of work, centralization of effort and unity of conversation, etc., which characterize adult's society In child's society the individual and social life are not differentiated. This lack of differentiation explains egocentric speech and thought. The gestures, movement and mimicry cannot express every thing and as such intellectual processes will remain egocentric. When the desire to work with others manifests itself around seven to eight, the proper conversation begins to take place; egocentric talk begins to lose its ground and the children 'begin to understand each other in spoken explanations in which gestures play as important a part as words' (Piaget 1959 : 42).

Piaget distinguishes between directed or intelligent thought and undirected thought or autistic thought. Directed thought is conscious thought directed towards an aim, adapted to reality and can be proved true or false. Further directed thought can be communicated through language. Undirected thought is subconscious and works through images. It is strictly individual and cannot be communicated through language.

Between autistic and directed thought, according to Piaget(1952), there are several intermediate varieties of thought. These intermediate varieties are subject to special logic, which must be considered as intermediate between logic of autism and intelligence. These intermediate varieties of thought may be considered as the egocentric thought. The chief form is the type of thought which seeks to adapt itself to reality, but does not get communicated as such.

Main categories of child thought :

What are the main categories of child thought? Based on the functions exemplified in child thought, we have three categories. These are (a) explicatory function related to causality, reality, time and place, (b) mixed function related to motivation of actions and justification of rules and (c) implicatory function related to classification, names, number and logical relations. Up to the age of three, the child takes what he desires as real ; slowly he comes to distinguish between what is real and what is imagined. This happens around the age of three and is reflected in the use of verbs 'to think', 'to believe' etc. In this period we see the child beginning to use the language characteristic prevrication. Further it is in this period the child begins to manipulate grammatical complexity such as cases, tenses and subordinate propositions-the tools necessary for the formulation of reasoning-begin to be incorporated. These enable the child to achieve some amount of conscious realization which in its turn enables the child make a distinction between the imagined or desired and the real. The child comes to grips with the intentions of people and things around him from what he perceives, since the intentions of people and of things around him sometimes conform to his desires and when there is resistance, he ascribes intentions to people and things around him.

The categories of child's thought are the result of the intentionalism. The mind turns to the external world in the explicatory function. Once the child becomes conscious of intentions of people and of things around him, he feels the necessity to project these into and adjust himself with the world around him, since this world until this day did not reveal anything contrary to his belief. The implicatory function enables the child to trace his way back to the directing motive or idea from the intentions he has identified through explicatory function. The intermediary function, mixed function, is necessary to account for the innumerable transitional cases. This is a case of progressive divergence.The following table gives the characteristic differences between egocentric thought and intelligent/directed thought (Piaget 1959 : 47).

Socialization of thought :

Piaget raises the question as to with whom the socialization of thought takes place. Is it in the presence of the adults or the children, the child begins to give up his egocentric speech, albeit gradually? In the course of this gradual socialization of child's thought, what modifications do we notice between his relationships with the adults and other children? First of all it is found that child's attitude towards other children and his attitude towards the adult are essentially different : the first is made up of cooperation ; the second is made up of intellectual submission. This difference in attitudes is reflected in the use of forms of speech and of egocentrism. The speech forms of dialogue and adapted information are represented more in conversation with children than in conversation with the adult. Piaget (1959 : 257) notes that between 3 years and a month and 3 years and four months dialogue with children is 23% as against 16% with the adult. During this period the coefficient of egocentrism of child is 71% with the adult and 56% with children. During the period between 3 years and 11 months and 4 years and one month the coefficients of egocentrism with the adult and with children become somewhat equal, 43.5% and 46% respectively. But in this later period, dialogue represents only 19% of speech whereas it rises to 35% with children. Thus egocentric speech passes through a semi-stationery phase marking gradual decreases, even though it fluctuates between half and one third of total amount of speech. The data given above further suggest different scales based on child's attitudes towards the adult and towards his fellows.

Certain studies have shown, however, than children's speech is more socialized with their parents than with each other. This apparently goes against the findings of Piaget. But he finds that such differences in results should be ascribed to the qualitative differences in contents in which observations were pursued. The child usually fluctuates between soliloquy and interrogation, when there is only minimum interference from the adult. Once the adult intervenes and goes on intervening to elicit information, confessions, etc., the coefficient of egocentrism with the adult will begin to be less. On the contrary the coefficient of egocentrism is higher when child's activity tends to be natural play. Once the activity approximates real work conditions, the situation becomes a conversational context demanding conscious and relevant participation and fulfillment of roles.

The third and fourth stages of logical operations :

The third stage in the acquisition of logical operations is around seven to eight years during which the child arrives at the constitution of concrete operational structures. During this period which extends up to the period of eleven to twelve years, the operations of thought are concerned with reality itself, with objects that can be manipulated and subjected to real action. A chief feature of this stage is the emergence of verbal syncretism in children. The child believes that he has understood what is said but in actuality he may not have fully understood what is said. He often hears phrases and thinks that he understands these phrases. He assimilates these in his own way, all the time distorting what he hears. This is a wide and comprehensive but obscure and inaccurate activity where no distinction is made and things are heaped one upon the other. There is no analysis of what is perceived. His egocentrism makes him to believe that he understands everyone and everything. This prevents him from going in for specifics of word and sentence meaning. The whole is assumed to be understood, before the part is analyzed. Thus when the child is confronted with sentences which he has not understood, he does not analyze the words employed in the sentences for an understanding. He goes in for the general scheme of things. However, there is a progressive adaptation, a progressive analysis of details in consonance with the shedding of egocentrism and the emergence of proper logical operations of the next stage.

This stage, from the linguists' point of view, does not involve acquisition of any basic linguistic structure. Yet the manipulation of linguistic structures is not stabilized in relation to logical operations. The child is still incapable of verbal reasoning about simple hypothesis. Piaget (1964 : 62) reports that children of nine or ten can arrange colours into series but cannot answer the questions of the following sort : Edith has darker hair than Lily. Edith's hair is lighter than Susan's. Which of the three has the darkest hair?

The last stage consists of operation of logical proposition. This commences around eleven to twelve years and gets stabilized around fourteen to fifteen years During this stage the child is in a position to apply mental operations to objects and is capable also of reflecting these operations in the absence of objects. The objects may be replaced by propositions such as sentences, mathematical symbols, etc. The child can engage himself in hypothetic-deductive thought and draw conclusions from pure hypothesis and not merely actual observations. It is observed that 'concrete thinking is the representation of a possible action and formal thinking is the representation of possible action'.

The role of language :

When we compare the child's pre-language behaviour with behaviour after the acquisition of language we find that the child is now in a position to use what we called earlier the displacement and arbitrariness features of an event. The child is now in a position to go beyond the sensori-motor perceptions and express himself on events not immediately present or even concrete. He indulges in clear manipulation of these features with ease.

This shift from sensori-motor schematization of children in the pre-language period to a representative schematization of concepts, etc., at the period during which language emerges, according to Piaget, however, does into prove that language is the source of thought. For, prior to language and along with the emergence of language symbolic play appear in children. During this play, the child develops a system of signifiers or symbols which are not arbitrary, but resemble the object or event in some way. They are like linguistic signs but different from linguistic signs in a very significant aspect in that linguistic signs are arbitrary whereas the symbol has some perceptual relationship or similarity with the object or event.

A second form of symbolism is deferred imitation in which the internalized event is repeated exactly in the absence of the model to which it corresponds. The third form is mental imagery which is a symbol of the object not yet manifested at the level of sensori-motor intelligence.

Piaget considers that these three types of personal symbols, namely, symbolic play, deferred imitation and mental imagery form the links between the sensori-motor behaviour and the representative behaviour which involves the characteristics of arbitrariness and displacement. The function of these three types cover both the system of verbal signs and that of symbols in the strict sense. The function is to differentiate the signifiers (signs and symbols) from the signified (objects and events that are conceptualized or schematic). In the sensori-motor level also we have systems of significations but these are only aspects of what is signified. These aspects do not evoke any representation of signified through thought process. Piaget does not go into the question whether the symbolic function brings about thought or thought allows the formation of symbolic function. In his words (Piaget 1964 : 91), to ask whether the symbolic function engenders thought or thought permits the formation of symbolic function engenders thought or thought permits the formation of symbolic function is as vain as to try to determine whether the river orients its banks or the banks orient the river.

Language is a form of the symbolic function and consists of collecting signs mainly arbitrary in nature and is characterized by the use of displacement features. According to Piaget the existence of the three forms of symbolism, explained above, even before the emergence of language suggests that thought precedes language and that 'language confines itself to profoundly transforming thought by helping it to attain its form of equilibrium by means of a more, advanced schematization and a more mobile abstraction'.

Just as the emergence and stabilization of symbolic function independent of language signs, certain logical operation also emerge independent of language and become the forerunner of thought processes involving language. Early logical operations involve additive and multiplicative operations upon classes and relations which result in classifications, seriations (occurring in one or more series), correspondences, etc. The sensori-motor intelligence that exists prior to language acquisition indicates the existence of the above. Transitivity of serial relations occur before language emerges. A observation in this connection is given in Piaget (1964 : 98) as follows: Jacqueline (at one year and seven months) watches me when I put a coin in my hand and then put my hand under a coverlet. I withdraw my hand closed ; Jacqueline opens it, then searches under the coverlet until she finds the object. In this the child clearly uses the transitivity relation : 'the coin was in the hand and the hand was under the coverlet ; therefore the coin is under the coverlet'. What happens really is that before he can combine or dissociate relatively universal and abstract classes, the child can classify collections of objects in the same perceptual field. He can combine and dissociate them before he can do so linguistically. Thus we finding the infant's elementary practical coordinations the functional equivalents of the operations of combination and dissociation : the characteristics of formal thought.

Piaget concedes that language, the emergence of language, makes the structures thus far available more universal and mobile than the sensori-motor coordinations. From his point of view language is a necessary and useful condition for propositional logic involving implications, disjunctions, incompatibilities, etc., unlike the concrete operations of the previous involving mere additions or multiplications, but is not sufficient in and of itself to give rise to these operations. Piaget poses that the psychological problem in the formation of prepositional operations consists of determining how the subject passes from elementary concrete structures (classifications, seriations, etc.) to the structure of the 'lattice'. What distinguishes a lattice from a simple classification (such as zoological classifications, for example) is the intervention of combinatory operations The question then is to ascertain whether language makes such combinatory operations possible or whether the operations evolve independently of language.

Piaget takes the position that a formal thought of this high order takes place independently of language and has nothing to do with the acquisition, emergence and evolution of language. When subjects are asked to combine three or four different coloured discs according to all the combinations possible, upto eleven to twelve years the combinations remain incomplete. They are constructed unsystematically; after the above period the subjects manage to construct all the combinations and follow a complete and methodical system. Language is already there but the logical operations take their own time and follow their own schedule. Hence it is difficult indeed to conclude that this system is a product of language.

Thus we find that in the three domains, namely, symbolic function, concrete operations and prepositional operations, language is not enough to explain the source of thought. In fact we find that symbolic functions and concrete operations do emerge before language is acquired and as for prepositional operations, we find that even when language exists, the operations do not emerge until a particular age level. From Piaget's point of view we should seek to find roots for the structures that characterize thought only in action and in sensori-motor mechanisms which are deeper than language, which exist before language and even without it. Yet at the same time it is quite clear that the more the structures of thought are refined with the acquisition of transformations which constitute new sources of knowledge, the more the language necessary for the achievement of elaboration.

Language is found necessary for the construction of logical operations on two important counts. The symbolic expression, that is language, elevates the logical operations from the personal level to the inter-personal plane. Language enables the successive actions of logical operations to get integrated into simultaneous systems, encompassing a set of interdependent transformations. The symbolic condensation and social regulation that characterize a language are indispensable for the elaboration of thought. Hence language and thought should be considered as 'linked in a genetic cycle where each necessarily leans on the other in interdependent formation and continuous reciprocation. In the last analysis, both depend on intelligence itself which antedates language and independent of it.

Additional remarks on Piaget's work :

Piaget's work is an excellent hypothetico-deductive work on language, thought and logical operations. Its merit lies in the painstaking observation of the context, of the entire field in which the child is left to pursue his own course. Piaget and his colleagues make note of each and every movement the child makes, and each and every dynamic event or object in the field. Everything is noted without prejudice to their possible relevance to the hypothesis on hand. A careful analysis of these observations helps the investigator to build his theory bit by bit. Without such an all comprehensive and exhaustive observation it would have been indeed difficult to arrive at paraphrasing skills. Paraphrasing is a complex skill usually refined and made more explicit through conscious education. Understanding an utterance when uttered may be different from demonstrating this understanding through matching with paraphrased materials. And yet the study of proverbs offers an excellent linguistic tool to study the phenomenon of syncretism, and the genius of Piaget exploits this tool admirably.

Vygotsky on Thought, Concept and Language :

Vygotsky's approach :

A different yet stimulating approach is presented by a Soviet Psychologist Lev Semonovich Vygotsky. He finds that although speech and thought emerge from different roots they have a close correspondence and this correspondence is not found in other animals. The problem is to identify how these two merge to make man what he is, as an adult.

We can have two extreme views on the relationship between language and thought. It may be an identification view, which posits a complete fusion of thought and language. Or it may be a total disjunction or segregation of language and thought. To what purpose should we study the relationship between language and thought if they are one and the same? And the relationship arising from disjunction and segregation would only be a mechanical external relationship rather than intricate relations between language and thought demanded by the pre-linguistic phase of thought and preintellectual development of speech. For, psychologists concede the existence of a prelinguistic phase in the use of thought and a preintellectual phase in the use of speech.

There is a vast gulf, in Vygotsky's terminology a dialect leap not only between total absence of consciousness (in inanimate matter) and sensation but also between sensation and thought. This generalized reflection of reality is exhibited through words in that a word is used not to refer to a single object but to a group or a class of objects. A word as a linguistic sign is not tied down to the same specific object. There is no primary bond between thought and word at first instance. A connection is made, which changes and grows in the course of evolution of thinking and speech. This connection results in the emergence of word as the unit of verbal thought.

Word represents an integral combination of sound and meaning. In acquiring the speech the child starts from one word and connects two or three words. He advances from simple sentences to complicated ones and finally to a coherent speech consisting of series of sentences. Thus he adopts the strategy of proceeding from the part to the whole in the acquisition of external speech. When we look at the phenomenon from the meaning point of view, the single word utterance of a child forms a whole sentence with full meaning. The child begins to differentiate between the meanings of words, sentences etc., as he proceeds from this amorphous whole. The external and the semantic aspects of speech develop in opposite directions. One starts from the particular to the whole, from word to sentence, and the other from the whole to the particular, from sentence to word. When the child's thought becomes more differentiated, he does into express the same in single word but begins to construct a composite whole. In this attempt progress in speech helps the child's thoughts to progress from a homogeneous whole to well defined parts.

Vygotsky is aware and critical of Piaget's position. In fact he devotes considerable energy to explain and elucidate Piaget's position. Piaget considers that an adult thinks socially even when he is alone and child under seven thinks and speaks egocentrically even in the society of others. The desire/motivation to work with others manifests itself around the age of seven or eight and with this egocentric talk begins to subside. But Vygotsky does not agree to the position that egocentric speech is merely a milestone; it does not fulfill any realistically useful function in evolving the later day thought processes and simply subsides when the child approaches particular age. Instead, he suggests that egocentric speech is into just an accompaniment to child's activity. It becomes an instrument not only of expression and release of tension but also in seeking and planning the solution of a problem. Egocentric speech should be considered a transitional stage in the evolution from vocal to inner speech. Support for this stand comes from the fact that there is a close correspondence between the egocentric speech of preschool children, and the mental operations of the school child. The older children often examine the problem or situation in silence and then find a solution. When asked about what they were doing (when confronted with the problem) we get answers quite close to the thinking aloud of the preschool children. Then the mental operations that a preschool child carries through the egocentric speech are carried through silent inner speech by the school children. The functions of the egocentric speech of the child has the same functions in that child's inner speech is not socialized and would be difficult to understand as the child omits to mention what is obvious to the speaker. The child continues to think for himself. When the egocentric speech subsides, it does not simply disappear but goes underground. When this change takes place we find children facing a difficult task, sometimes resort to egocentric speech and sometimes to silent reflection. It is Vygotsky's hypothesis that the processes of inner speech develop and become stabilized approximately at the beginning of school age and that this causes the quick drop in egocentric speech at that stage. The child begins to develop abstraction from vocalized egocentric speech.

Vygotsky's stages of development of thought :

The scheme of development suggested by Vygotsky is different from the scheme of development we find elsewhere. Vygotsky posits social speech as the first stage after which the egocentric speech develops and which then changes into inner speech. As we have seen earlier Piaget's general position is from nonverbal autistic thought to egocentric thought and speech to socialized speech and logical thinking. Vygotsky's position refutes the schema of vocal speech, whisper and inner speech totally.

Vygotsky's major premise is that the primary function of speech in both children and adult is communication, social contact. Hence the earliest speech of the child is also essentially social. Its early global and multifunctional character gets differentiated, leading to a sharp division of speech into egocentric and communicative types at one stage. The egocentric speech makes its appearance when the child transfers his social forms of behaviour to the sphere of inner-psychic functions. The child thinks aloud. This thinking aloud, egocentric speech, leads to inner speech, serving both autistic and logical thinking. In Vygotsky's view, autism is a result of the differentiation and polarization of the various functions of thought. Autistic thought is a later development, thinking in concepts. It gives a degree of autonomy from reality and permits satisfaction in fantasy of needs frustrated in life.

A crucial suggestion which will be of immediate concern to present day linguists is Vygotsky's assertion that non-human beings are incapable of speech in its real sense. He recognizes that the medium of sounds is not what decides language. It is the use of signs that makes a system to qualify as a language. Animal's inability to speak has not much to do with their improper voice box but is due to their non-use of signs. There is a coincidence of sound production with gestures in animals endowed with voice. Man also has this characteristic. But in animals intense vocal reactions do not allow a simultaneous intellectual operation as in man. Further voice is used for emotional release as well as for psychological contact with others. However, this effort at emotional release r psychological contact is not connected with intellectual reactions. This effort is not intentional and is not used I ay way to influence others. Thus even the existing 'speech' of animals occur without having any connection with their thought process. That animals, at least anthropoids, have pre-speech thought is revealed by the inventions of apes in making and using tools, or in finding detours for the solution of problems.

From the phylogenetic point of view Vygotsky formulates the following : Thought and speech (if we call the voice of animals as speech) have different genetic roots. The two functions develop along different lines and independently of each other. There is no clear-cut and constant function among them. Anthropoids display an intellect somewhat like man's in certain respects (the embryonic use of tools) and a language somewhat like man's in totally different respects (the phonetic aspect of their speech, its release function, the beginnings of a social function). The close correspondence between thought and speech characteristic of man is absent in anthropoids. In the phylogeny of thought and speech, a prelinguistic phase in the development of thought and a preintellectual phase in the development of speech are clearly discernible.

On the ontogenetic level also we find two different genetic roots. The existence of a prespeech phase of thought development is supported by the evidence of thinking involved in the use of tools. The child is capable of comprehending mechanical connections and of devising mechanical means to mechanical ends. The action is performed in a conscious and purposeful manner before the appearance of speech. The preintellectual roots of speech is supported by the fact that child's early speech of babbling, crying and even his first words are predominantly an emotional form of behaviour. But the most interesting and important feature is that at about the age of two, thought and speech till then separate begins to serve intellect and thought. An indication towards this is fond in child's sudden, active curiosity about words, and his questions such as what is this. He tries to learn the signs attached to objects. There is a sudden rapid increase in his vocabulary also. The child feels the need for words and seems to have realized the symbolic function of words. Prior to this stage, the word is taken only as an attribute of the object rather than as a sing. The child grasps the internal relation sign-referent after he grasps the external structure, object-word. At this stage, speech which was so far affective-conative, enters the intellectual phase, facilitating the meeting of the lines of speech and thought development. Thus the speech becomes rational and thought verbal.

Verbal thought does not include all forms of thought or all forms of speech. A vast area of thought has nothing to do with speech. Likewise a vast area of speech has nothing to do with thought. Thought and speech should be considered only as two interesting circles. We have given examples of preintellectual speech and prelinguistic thought. In the adults, thinking manifested in the use of tools do not usually have anything to do with speech. Thought can function without any detectable speech movement. No direct correspondence is there between inner speech and the subject's tongue or larynx movements. Speech prompted by emotion is an example of speech without thought. Actually we have phrases such as thoughtless speech in every language.

Yet the vast area of verbal thought is the corner stone of scheme of thinking in human beings. The speech and mental operations involving the use of sings follow the same course of development. Vygotsky identifies four stages in their development. The first is the primitive stage of pre-linguistic thought and preintellectual speech. The second stage is called naïve psychology. The child is exposed to his own body and to the objects around him. This experience is applied to the use of tools. This is when the child's practical intelligence emerges At this stage the child acquires the correct use of grammatical forms and structures, although the logical operations for which the forms and structures stand are not understood by him. He is capable of using expressions such as because, if, when and but, before he acquires casual, conditional or temporal relations. In the third stage he distinguishes external signs and external operations used as aids in the solution of internal problems. He counts on his fingers and resorts to mnemonic aids. In this stage he enters the egocentric speech stage.

The fourth and final stage is the 'ingrowth' stage. In this stage the external operations turn inward. The child would start counting in his mind and is in a position to manipulate logical memory, to operate with inherent relationships and inner signs. This stage sees the final stage of inner, soundless speech. A constant interaction is established between outer and inner operations. One form changes effortlessly and frequently into the other. In essence 'inner speech develops through a slow accumulation of functional and structural changes; it branches off from the child's external speech simultaneously with the differentiation of the social and egocentric functions of speech. Speech structures mastered by the child become the basic structures of his thinking'.

Vygotsky suggests that thought development is determined by language, by the linguistic tools of thought and by sociocultural experience of the child. The development of inner speech depends upon the development of logic in the child. And the development of logic in the child is a direct function of his socialized speech. 'The child's intellectual growth is contingent on his mastering the social means of thought, that is, language'.

Vygotsky suggests that the development of inner speech and of verbal thought must not be taken as a simple continuation of the roots of speech and thought which spring from different sources, because the nature of the development itself changes from biological to socio-historical. Verbal thought, as mentioned earlier, is conditioned by the growth and development of logic and by the development of socialized speech. The growth and development of verbal thought is subject to the premises of historical materialism.

Concept formation :

Vygotsky's chief contribution lies in the study of concept formation by children. He recognizes that the sensory material and the word are indispensable parts of concept formation. Hence neither the investigations of concept formation through the elicitation of verbal definitions of concepts from the children nor the investigations of the same from the associationist point of view characterizes the problem correctly. Essentially concept formation is a creative process and a concept emerges and takes shape when solution to a problem is sought. A concept is never formed and internalized through memorizing words and connecting them with objects. A child is capable of grasping a problem and visualizing the goal it sets at an early stage in his development. This leads the child to develop functional equivalents of concepts. These functional equivalents of concepts are however, radically different from those of adults and the form of thought that he uses in dealing with these tasks differ from adults' in their composition, structure and mode of operation. The crux of the problem is the acquisition of signs which are the central part of the total process. In concept formation, the sign is the word which at first plays the role of means in forming a concept and later becomes its symbol. As regards maturity in formation and manipulation of concepts the processes begin early but then ripen, take shape and develop only at puberty. Until puberty the child forms and manipulates functional and not genuine concepts. Vygotsky finds that these functional concepts (to be detailed below) stand in the same relationship to true concepts as the embryo to the fully formed organism. If we equate these two, we would be ignoring the definitive and lengthy developmental processes between the two.

Another factor shall also be considered while characterizing the processes of concept formation and the thought processes. The presence of the problem itself is not the cause of the process that leads to concept formation. The socio-cultural tasks set by the society interact with the developmental dynamics and lead to the formation of intrinsic forms between them. This coupled with the acquisition and understanding of the relations between signs through the use of word, becomes the immediate psychological cause of radical change in the intellectual process that we find in the threshold of adolescence. Vygotsky asserts that 'learning to direct one's own mental process with the aid of words of signs is an integral part of the process of concept formation. The ability to regulate one's actions by using auxiliary means reaches its full development only in an adolescence'.

Vygotsky's three phase in concept formation :

Vygotsky identifies (1962 : 59) three phases in concept formation, each phase having several stages in its turn. We may call the first phase as syncretic phase in which children put together objects which do not have any inherent relationship in unorganized 'heaps'. These heaps show an undirected extension of the meaning. Word meaning at this stage is a vague syncretic conglomeration of individual objects, a merger of the most diverse elements into one image, obtained through change impressions and because of this, the syncretic relationship is unstable. Many words, however, have in part the same meaning to the child and adult, especially words referring to concrete objects and this suffices to ensure mutual understanding between children and adults.

There are three distinct stages noticeable in the first phase. The first is the manifestation of the trial and error, in which additions are made at random to the group and deletions from the group made when the guess is proven wrong and found unworkable. In the second stage the children are guided by their immediate perception of relationships between objects in terms of contiguity in space, time or some other more complex relationship. As a result of the influence of immediate perception, a syncretic organization of the visual field comes into existence. In the third stage, an advancement is made in terms of classification of the syncretic image. The children begin to combine elements taken from different heaps, although such a combination of elements leads only to the formation of additional unorganized heaps. The relationships that are perceived between objects of the heaps continue to be subjective.

The second phase in concept formation is thinking in complexes. Subjective impressions of children about the bonds existing between objects continue but at the same time they begin to see the bonds actually existing between objects. At this stage the children partly outgrow egocentricism and are capable of distinguishing between their own subjective impressions and the actuality. The abstract and logical operations are, however, yet to blossom and the relationships of objects remain factual. The factually present connections lead to the inclusion of a given element into a complex, 'while a concept groups objects according to one attribute, the bonds relating the elements of a complex to the whole and to one another may be as diverse as the contacts and relationships of the elements are in reality'.

There are five types of complexes which occur one after the other. Associative type of complex is formed when the child notices a bond between the sample object and any other object. There need be no consistency in this regard in the sense that what prompts the child to group one object with the sample object need not be used for grouping another object with the sample object. If colour is the basis for the clubbing of an object with the sample object, additions to the group need not be restricted to this criterion but can be extended on the similarity of shape or for that matter on the basis of any bond that the child may visualize between the sample and another object.

The second type consists of collections - placing of objects together on the basis of differing traits of objects. A principle of contrast and complementation seems to beat work here. Collections are made in such a fashion that the objects comprising the collection contrast with each other in some attributes. But here again consistency is not maintained in that a trait chosen for contrast is soon given up in preference to another. No definite reason is deducible for such a waywardness. But soon experience teaches the child to go in for functional sets: cup, saucer, and spoon, etc. Thus the relationships between objects noticed in practical experience characterize the collection type.

Next comes the chain complex type which is a 'dynamic, consecutive joining the individual links into a single chain, with meaning carried over from one link to the next'. The child starts with the grouping of objects on a single trait but soon comes to group objects on the basis of another trait. As a result we have subgroups within a group, each having a central trait and each trait having some link with the other. But the group as a whole has no central significance. No single trait is abstracted from the rest, and given a pivot role as in the fullfledged formation of a concept.

The fluidity of the relation that exists between objects in the chain complex leads to the next type called diffuse complex. In this complex objects are united by indefinite, indeterminate and fluid connections. The child picks up trapezoids after picking up triangles, perhaps on the assumption that the trapezoid is but a triangle without its top and so on.

The last type is called pseudo-concept type. The child arrives at a generalization which is almost like a concept. The child may have grouped the objects into a homogeneous and consistent group on a seemingly single trait. Yet the child is not in a position to put this idea into operation when the problem is repeated. If we give a yellow triangle as the sample, the child picks out all the triangles in the experimental material; he seems to have been guided by the general idea of concept of a triangle. However, experimental analysis shows that in reality the child is guided by the concrete, visible likeness and has formed only an associative complex limited to a certain kind of perceptual bond. Even when the results are identical, the process by which they are reached is not at all the same as in conceptual thinking. This is a transitional link between thinking in complexes and real concept formation.

In actual contexts where the child grows with adult language, the development of complexes is conditioned by and predetermined by the adult speech meanings. The generalizations will be guided by the adult speech. The child has no direct access to adult's thought processes but he is left with the words of adult speech around which his own complexes of thought processes generally develop. Pseudo concept complex and real concept are misunderstood by many as one and the same, but there is a functional equivalence between them. There is coincidence of meanings in adult's and child's speech. There is large mutual understanding between adult and child. However, the similarities should not make us to conclude that all forms of adult intellectual activity are already present in embryo in child thinking and that no drastic change occurs at the age of puberty. For, the concept is not provided ready, and the pseudo concept does not help the child in the repetition of operations. The pseudo concept is only a connecting link towards the ascent to real concepts.

Vygotsky finds support and evidence for thinking by complexes in the acquisition of language itself in the processes by which meanings of words are acquired and changed in course in time. We distinguish between meaning and referent in linguistics. Calcutta and the biggest city of India may refer to the same referent, but the words constituting the biggest city of India have 'meaning' of their own. There can also be identity of referent combined with divergence of meaning as in the case of synonyms. These words may have been arrived at through two or more different thought processes one word emphasizing one aspect and another a different aspect.

Transfers of meaning act exactly in the same way as thinking in complexes. In Russian the word Sutki has the meaning 'day and night'. This word originally meant a seam, the junction of two pieces of cloth. Later it came to be used for any junction; then for twilight where day and night meet. Finally it came to mean the time from one twilight to the next, the 24-hour stretch. Likewise a child incorporates different things into a group on the basis of concrete imagery.

The naming process in language also is governed by complexes. Most of the time, objects are named after their non-essential attributes. As such the name does not fully characterize the concept - the name is always too broad or too narrow. The history of naming objects in language reveals a 'ceaseless struggle between conceptual thought and the heritage of primitive thinking in complexes'. The primary word does not serve as a straightforward symbol for a concept but as an image, a picture, a mental sketch of a concept. This pictorial concept is linked with other objects in a group.

The third phase of concept formation enables us to abstract and single out elements. This abstracted element can be viewed apart from the totality of concrete experience which led to the concept formation. The genuine concept formation is revealed when the child is able to unite and/or to separate abstracted elements.

This third phase consists of several stages. In the first stage the child groups together the maximally similar objects. In the next stage of the development of abstraction, the grouping of objects on the basis of maximum similarity is superseded by grouping on the basis of a single attribute. These traits are stable and these form and potential concepts. There is similarity between potential concepts and thinking in complexes in that single elements are abstracted in both the cases. However, the abstracted elements change frequently in thinking by complexes whereas in thinking by potential concepts the abstracted elements are stable. The mastery abstraction in conjunction with child's ability to think in advanced complexes detailed above enables the child to acquire genuine concepts. A concept is a concept only when the abstracted elements can be synthesized anew. The synthesis thus achieved become an instrument of thought and its successful operation.

The adolescent and concept formation :

The study of the intellectual processes of adolescents indicate that the primitive, syncretic and complex forms of thinking give place to potential concepts which in their turn make room for the emergence and use of genuine concepts. But the formation of concepts do not come to an end at this age. In actuality, the giving up of potential concepts in preference to genuine concepts is only a beginning. The adolescent continues to operate with the elementary forms and with thinking in complexes. Adolescence, as to be expected from a study of concomitant factors, is not a period of completion but only a period of crisis and transition. The adolescent is able to form and use a concept correctly in a concrete situation. He still has difficulty to express that concept in words. The verbal definition of the concept given by an adolescent will be narrower than the manner in which he has used the concept. This is not exclusively found I the adolescents only. At one time or other the adult exhibits this discrepancy. Vygotsky takes this phenomenon as the confirmation of his assumption that concepts evolve in ways differing from deliberate conscious elaboration of experience in logical terms and that analysis of reality with the help of concepts precedes analysis of the concepts themselves.

There are several obstacles an adolescent encounters in the application of concepts he has acquired. He must be able to transfer the application of a concept acquired in a situation to a new set of contexts in a different set of configuration. He should also be able to define a concept acquired in a concrete situation and to use it in an entirely abstract plane. The greatest difficulty lies in the manipulation of reversibility. The use of acquired concept and its abstracted element in a concrete situation again will pose problems and these problems should be overcome to conclude that a genuine concept is formed. In the final analysis, Vygotsky finds concept formation 'as a movement of thought within the pyramid of concepts, constantly alternating between two directions, from the particulars to the general, and from the general to the particular'.

Spontaneous and scientific concepts :
Vygotsky distinguishes between spontaneous and scientific concepts. The latter concepts are obtained through conscious effort mainly achieved by instruction. However, the developmental processes of spontaneous and scientific concepts are related and they influence each other. A concept and its acquisition should be looked at from the point of view of a system. One becomes conscious of a concept and uses it with deliberate control only when it is a part of the system. Consciousness is generalization and generalization leads to formation of superordinate concept which includes the given concept as a particular case. Thus there is a hierarchy of concepts with different levels of generalization. The conscious concepts or scientific concepts are acquired in school in relation to some other concept already in existence; the child lacks conscious awareness of relationships in spontaneous concepts. He handles the relationships correctly in an unreflective manner. He is able to understand the meaning of the word, because, in the sentence, he won't go to school because he is sick, but unable to identify the causation. In the place of causation he substitutes the consequence.

Speech and writing :

The relationship between scientific and spontaneous concepts should be viewed from the relation of school instruction to the mental development of the child. Vygotsky finds that the development of the psychological foundations for instruction in areas such as writing does not precede instruction but unfolds in a continuous inter-action with the contributions of instructions. The development of writing is conscious and is thus non-spontaneous. The difficulty faced by the child in acquiring writing should not be taken as due to inability to manipulate muscles. The source of difficulty should be sought in deeper reasons. Written language differs from oral language in structure and mode of functioning. Even the minimal development of writing requires a high level of abstraction. The child disengages himself in a second degree of symbolization. The acquisition of oral speech by itself is the acquisition of signs. The acquisition of writing is a step further and the child must now transfer the symbolization he acquired in the process of speech acquisition to written language. Vygotsky compares this to the acquisition of algebra which is harder than arithmetic. Thus, the difficulty a child faces in the acquisition of writing should be ascribed to the inherent abstract quality of writing to child's un-preparedness to appreciate and acquire this inherent abstract quality.

Added to the above problem is the fact that writing needs no intercolour. This is a new and strange situation to the child. In speech the child is governed by his immediate need and the dynamic situation in which the speech is carried out helps the child to understand the motives of interlocutors. Writing is far removed from his immediate needs. Here we have to create the situation, and to represent it to ourselves. This requires detachment from the actual situation, for which the child is not yet ready.

Writing is conscious because deliberate analytical action is demanded on the part of the child. The discrete nature of linguistic units should be appreciated consciously when the child learns writing. He must recognize the sound structure of each word, dissect it and reproduce it in alphabetical symbols, which he must have studied and memorized before. This same deliberate preparedness is needed to put words in a certain sequence to form a sentence.

Speech, written language and inner speech :

Another feature we must notice is the relation that exists between speech and inner speech on the one hand and written language and inner speech on the other. It is obvious that inner speech follows speech, whereas the written language follows inner speech. Actually written language presupposes the existence of inner speech, as the act of writing implies a translation from inner speech. Vygotsky suggests that the syntax of inner speech is the exact opposite of the syntax of written speech, with oral speech standing in the middle. There is still another difference between inner speech and written language in that in the inner speech the subject of thought is always known to the thinker, whereas in the written language the situation must be explained in full in order to be intelligible. This requires an ability to abstract and as in the earlier case this ability is not readily available to the child.

The above analysis of the differences between oral speech and written language holds good for several other areas including the conscious acquisition of techniques of grammatical analysis. I essence, the child's development lacks abstraction and this lack of abstraction and analytic operation explains any difficulty the child may face in the acquisition of conscious concepts. The child's overcoming these difficulties indicates not only the relevance of instruction but also the process which unfolds along with development. Even on the temporal relation between the processes of instruction and the development of the corresponding psychological functions, Vygotksy finds that instruction usually precedes development. The child is made to acquire certain habits and skills in a given area before he comes to apply them consciously and deliberately.

The scientific concepts acquired through instruction in different subjects act as one complex process and do not stand separately. They interact with each other, each facilitating the learning of others. The same holds good even for the relationship between scientific and spontaneous everyday concepts. We found that the scientific concepts are acquired much earlier than the developmental schedule. Such acquisition helps bring in clarity and quality in the acquisition of everyday spontaneous concepts.

Foreign language acquisition :

Vygotsky likens the influence of scientific concepts on the mental development of the child to the effect of learning of a foreign language. Foreign language acquisition is conscious and deliberate from the start. This presupposes some awareness of phonetic, grammatical and syntactic forms. In the acquisition of foreign languages the higher forms develop before spontaneous, fluent speech, which is the reverse of what we find in the acquisition of native language. The child conjugates and declines correctly, but without realizing it. He cannot tell the gender, the case, or the tense of the word he is using. In a foreign language he distinguishes between masculine and feminine gender and is conscious of grammatical forms from the beginning. The child transfers to the new language the system of meanings he already possesses in his own. The reverse also is true - a foreign language facilitates mastering the higher forms of the native language. The child learns to see his language as one particular system among many, to review its phenomena under more general categories, and this leads to awareness of his linguistic operations. Likewise the acquisition of scientific concepts through instruction enables the child to look at his non-conscious, day to day concepts from a new angle. Vygotsky asserts that 'concepts do not lie in the child's mind like peas in a bag, without any bonds between them. If that were the case intellectual operation requiring coordination of thoughts would not be possible, not any general conception of the world. Not even separate concepts as such cold exist. Their very nature presupposes a system.'

The law of equivalence of concepts :

The development of word meanings at a higher level are governed by the law of equivalence of concepts. This law states that any concept can be formulated in terms of their concepts in a countless number of ways. "One" for instance may be expressed as 1000 minus 999 or in general, as the difference between any two consecutive numbers, or as any number divided by itself, and in a myriad of other ways. This is a pure example of equivalence of concepts. The higher levels of equivalence and generality of concepts help a child to remember thoughts independently of words.

Some general remarks on Piaget and Vygotsky :

Piaget and Vygotsky present two basic and representative approaches found among psychologists. These approaches seem to run counter to each other, especially when Piaget proposes socialization after individualization and Vygotsky proposes socialization after individualization and Vygotsky proposes individualization before socialization. These approaches do not exhaust all the available ones. Particularly interest in Vygotsky outside Soviet Bloc is of recent origin. Further the traditionalist controversy between centralist and peripheralist positions are not at all dealt with in our chapter. These differences relate mainly to the neurophysiological treatment of the problem, the centralist holding the position that brain events constitute thinking and the peripheralist holding the position that it is the execution thinking and the peripheralist holding the position that brain events constitute thinking and the peripheralist holding the position that it is the execution of the receptors and the consequent neutral impulse that are crucial in thinking. In other words, the peripheralist demands responses to arrive at a solution, whereas the centralist does not. The developmentalists like Piaget and Vygotsky seek an explanation through an interaction of socio-cultural and historical processes with mental operations. The diligent reader interested in pursuing an analysis through the neurophysiological mechanism is recommended to wade through McGuigan (1966).

Linguistic relativity and reality :

Some general remarks :

Earlier in this Chapter we presented ideas of linguists on the inter-relationship between language and thinking. We did not, however, present a stimulating and a controversial linguistic approach to thinking in relation to reality through language. This approach is called Whorfian or more appropriately Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativity.

Thinking is a covert process, sometimes independent of language, many a time expressed and carried through language. When language is the most important medium of thinking, when we find that thought can be enriched, sharpened, and transmitted through the use of language, and when the concepts which are elements of thought are closely linked with the verbal unit, word, and when thought is but a conceptualization of reality, it is but natural that there is intricate relation between language and reality. Sapir, in recent times, was more explicit in recognizing and asserting that our perception of the world around us and even our thought processes are influenced, controlled and guided by the native language we speak. Human beings, according to Sapir, are very much at the mercy of the particular language which is the medium of expression for their society. Nobody adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language. Language is not an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection. No human being lives in an objective world alone but in a world unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group to which an individual belongs. Our experience of the world around us is what it is because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation.

Whorf on relativity and reality :

In his writings on linguistic relativity (Whorf 1956), Benjamin Lee Whorf, a chemical engineer-turned fire insurance agent, turned a great exponent of linguistics, took to investigate the inter-relation between language, thought and reality. The theory of linguistic relativity which is how the Whorfian hypothesis is characterized, states in essence that all higher levels of thinking in human beings are dependent on language and that the structure of language one habitually uses influences the manner in which one understands his environment. In the course of his work as an insurance agent, Whorf found that many fire accidents which could have been easily averted took place because of certain linguistic assumptions of the individuals involved in these accidents. In a storage of gasoline drums the people tended to be cautious and to refrain from smoking or tossing cigarettes about, whereas in a storage of 'empty' gasoline drums, which was more dangerous than the former ones, people tended to be slack. And this had resulted in serious accidents.

For Whorf the underlying linguistic system, namely the grammar of a language, should not be considered a mere reproducing instrument for voicing ideas. The underlying linguistic system of a language is the shaper of ideas. It is the programme and guide for the individual's mental activity. The formulation of ideas is not an independent activity but is related closely to the particular grammar. The ideas are organized by the linguistic systems in our minds : We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significance as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way - an agreement that holds throughout our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language. The agreement is, of course, an implicit and unstated one, BUT ITS TERMS ARE ABSOLUTELY OBLIGATORY; we cannot talk at all except by subscribing to the organization and classification of data which the agreement decrees. (Whorf 1956 : 212-14).

Whorf poses two important questions : (1) Are the concepts of time, space and matter expressed in one language found in substantially the same form by experience in another language, or are they in part conditioned by the structure of particular language? (2) Are there traceable affinities between (a) cultural and behavioral norms, and (b) large- scale linguistic patterns? Whorf finds that for the first question the answer is that we are indeed conditioned by the language we habitually use. As regards the second question he finds quite a bit of traceable affinities between cultural and behavioral norms and large-scale linguistic patterns.

A comparison of European languages and Hope, an American Indian language, brings to the fore the wide gap that exists between the categorization of events in these languages. In European languages plurality and cardinal numbers are applied to real plurals and imaginary plurals. That is, we can have expressions such as ten men as well ten days. The first is a perceptible spatial aggregate and the second is a metaphorical aggregate. The latter is extended to the concept of cyclicity or times in expressions such as ten steps forward, ten strokes on a bell. In all the cases, we look from the quantity point of view and the whole thing is objectified. In Hope, there is no imaginary plural. Pluralization is restricted only to those which can be objectified. The length of the time is regarded as a relation between two events in lateness.

In European languages we have individual nouns which denote bodies with definite outlines such as a tree, a stick and a man; we have mass nouns. But in Hope all nouns have an individual sense and both singular and plural forms. A Hopi says not a glass of water, but a water, not a piece of meat but a meat.

European languages objectify terms such as summer, winter, September, morning, noon and sunset. We can use them as subjects or objects and they can form expression such as at sunset, in winter. In Hopi all phase terms like summer, morning, form a formal part of speech by themselves, distinct from nouns, verbs and even other Hopi adverbs, giving the meaning when it is morning or while morning-phase is occurring. One never says it is a hot summer or summer is hot; summer is only when conditions are hot, when heat occurs. One says summer now and not this summer. The three tense system of the European languages is conspicuous by its absence in Hopi.

In Hopi verbs have no tenses like the European languages, but have other forms which specify the event more clearly. A form denotes that the speaker (not the subject) reports the situation (present and past). Another form denotes that he expects it (future), etc. The aspects are used to indicate different degrees of duration and different kinds of tendency during duration. There is no objectification of time as in the European languages.

The European languages express duration, intensity and tendency through metaphors of size, number (plurality), position, shape, and motion. Duration is expressed as long, short, great, much, quick, slow, etc., tendency as more, increase, grow, turn, get, approach, go, come, rise, fall, stop, smooth, even rapid slow. This is a part of the scheme of objectifying indulged in by the European languages. In Hopi such metaphor is absent. Hopi does not use space terms when there is no space involved. However, Hopi has abundant conjugational and lexical means of expressing duration, intensity, and tendency directly as such. The major grammatical patterns do not lend themselves for analogies for an imaginary space. This is a huge class of words, denoting only intensity, tendency duration and sequence. The intensities, strengths, their continuity, and variation and their rate of change, distinctions of degree, rate, constancy, repetition, increase and decrease of intensity, immediate sequence, interruption or sequence, after an interval, etc., and also 'QUALITIES of strengths, such as we should express metaphorically as smooth, even hard, rough'. Hopi does not use any terms in these cases that would resemble each other as we find in European languages. Thus Hopi in its nouns is highly concrete, whereas in the use of tenses 'it becomes abstract almost beyond our power to follow'.

The comparison according to Whorf, is a proof that the same physical evidence does not lead to the same picture of the universe, unless the linguistic backgrounds of the viewers are similar. Or the linguistic backgrounds can be calibrated in some manner. The 'strange' expressions conveyed through 'strange' grammatical categories are related clearly to the habitual thought of Hopis. Whorf suggests that European languages analyze reality largely in terms of what they call things (bodies and quasibodies) plus modes of extensional but formless existence. The Hopi language on the other hand seems to analyze reality largely in terms of 'events, or better, eventing', objectively and subjectively.

A Hopi looks at reality the way his language enables him in a predetermined manner. His serialization of events and things are governed by the categories available to him in his language, which are different from those available in the European languages. Thus we find that different systems of rationalization are in operation in different groups of languages.

A brief critique of Sapir-Whorf hypothesis :

The theory of linguistic has kindled stimulated thinking and discussion in linguistics and psychology. The interest and attention bestowed upon this theory by linguists, psychologists and even lay public show interest in the eternal mystery of our own being and our skepticism and uncertainty about the way we go about categorizing the universe and judging others, objects and events. A theory such as the one propounded by Whorf runs through every culture as lay belief. But these lay beliefs were not to be taken seriously, until Whorf's demonstration of differences of grammatical categories, etc., in diverse language in relation to differences in the way the universe is conceived.

Yet the theory, however fascinating could not get hundred percent approval from linguists and psychologists. In fact the current thinking in linguists and psychology has deduced evidence to disprove it at least partly. First there can be no two opinion about the importance of language as a system of signs in shaping and enriching thought processes and in the categorization of universe. There can be no two opinion also about the importance of language as a socio-cultural and historical vehicle of communication of a specific community in providing, guiding, shaping and sharpening the concepts of the categories of universe. But the question should be looked at from the point of view as to whether a human can transcend the supposed barriers set supposedly by the language of his habitual thought and acquire concepts of different nature such as the ones of Whorf quoted above. Further if every differences in the categorization of universe, communication between communities should be just not possible. It is found that in some languages qualifiers occur after the qualified, in some before the qualified and in several others in both ways. There are several other characteristics such as the one we have in Hindi for specifying the gender of even inanimate objects. Do these lead to any difference in the compartmentalization of the universe?

In English, we have expressions such as the following. I lost my book; My book is lost; The book is lost. An agent is implied in all such cases. The episode can be expressed as though the object got lost by itself in Tamil. No agent is required. Does it mean that in the former case the speakers have perceived that an inanimate cannot get lost by itself, etc., and that in the latter case the speakers have perceived that inanimate objects behave like animate ones?

Another objection stems from recent preoccupation of linguists with the universals of language. The universals of language are conceived not only from the linguistic point of view but also from an extrapolation of biological factors. Existing information on diversity of language indicates that the diversity is rather marginal.

Apart from the above, the experimental evidence in studies of relationship between language and cognition is against the acceptance of the theory of linguistic relativity. Brown and Lenneberg (1954) while questioning the Whorfian assumption that the world is differently experienced and conceived in different linguistic communities and that language is casually related to these psychological differences find that non-availability of words for phenomena is no indication that the speaker is unable to perceive the differences. A subject may be able to distinguish two situations perfectly well and yet he need not care to do anything about it. One might say that more namable categories are nearer the top of the cognitive deck. They suggest that increased frequency of perceptual categorization means a generally greater availability of that category and that is why the Eskimo distinguishes his three kinds of snow more often than Americans do.

Brown and Lenneberg point out that Whorf's assumption that structural categories are symbolic categories is not borne out by linguistic investigations. As we mentioned earlier grammatical categories in many cases such as grammatical gender do not seem to signify anything to the speakers. It is true that languages can cause a cognitive structure. This is because language is a sign system. For communication to become feasible members of a community adopt common conventions and to that extent they share a common view of the world. Brown and Lenneberg compare life to a river, and speech to a babbling brook whose course parallels that of the river. The babbling brook is a guide to the structure of the more complex but also more interesting river.

Speakers of languages differ from each other in giving the names of various shades of colour. Even within a group of people speaking the same language this phenomenon is found to occur. This 'cultural' difference introduces an important variable, codability, that is, certain colours are differentially coded in different languages. Linguistic evidence for this manifests in environmental distinctions expressed lexically in one language and word combinations in another language. The Brown and Lenneberg Experiment aimed at discovering additional behavioral indices of codability with a view to exploring the behavioral consequences of differential availability of cognitive categories. Their experiment on the recognition of colours showed that correlation between recognition and codability scores increases as the importance of storage in the recognition task increases. This is in agreement with the observation a linguist normally would make about the functional role of language as a sign system. Brown and Lenneberg assert that 'if a single colour were exposed, removed, and then identified with minimal delay, subjects might retain some direct memory of the colour, perhaps as a visual image. In this situation discriminability would be a determinant of recognition but codability would not be. However, when the number of colours is increased and the interval period filled with activity, the importance of linguistic codability should increase'.

The experimenters found that the differences in the English codability of colours are related to the differences in the recognition of these colours. But this does not in any way prove that language is the reason for recognition. Brown and Lenneberg go further: 'If we may be permitted a guess it is that in the history of a culture the peculiar features of the language and thought of a people probably develop together. In the history of an individual born into a linguistic community the story is quite different. The patterned responses are all about him. They exist before he has the cognitive structure that will enable him to pattern his behaviour in the approved fashion. Simple exposure to speech will not shape anyone's mind. To the degree that the unacculturated individual is motivated to learn the language of a community, to the degree that he uses its structure as a guide to reality, language can assume a formative role'. We have as yet no reason to disagree with this view.

N O T E S

'Language, thought and reality as revealed through language' is a fascinating subject in all cultures. Thought is considered as a distinguishing mark of human beings. Carroll (1964) is a good introduction to the subject. Carroll (1953) also presents aspects of the problem. Burner, et al (1956), Humphrey (1951), Hunt (1962), Adams (1972), Furth (1966), and McGuigan (1966) present aspects of thinking and concept formation. Voss (1969) may be referred to for different mathematical models of thinking.

Hoijer (1954), Church (1961), and Brown (1958) present discussions of the Whorfian hypothesis of linguistic relativity. Several good and easy introductions are available for Piaget, particularly Boyle (1969), Almy (1966), Beard (1969) andAthey and Rubadean (1970).