Does language exists if nobody hears it?

This is very interesting because language is heard because the vibration of vocal chords.

So does the information pattern pre-exist before the word is spoken?

It's just like ideas.

A person has an idea for a truck before a truck exist.
A person has an idea for a train before a train exist or an airplane.

The question becomes does the information patterns for these things pre-exist?

This would match the holographic principle, black hole entropy and even Plato and the allegory of the cave.

This would mean an informational pattern that forms everything in the universe exists on a 2-D surface area and this information is projected into 3-D space.

This would mean at the base of everything is immaterial information. So in a perfect vacuum pure information exists and virtual particles pop into and out of existence in the false vacuum and virtual realities form.

[edit on 27-5-2009 by platosallegory]

That is an interesting question. I guess it depends on how you determine what exactly language is and how it functions. If we go back in time before humans existed, this statement might be true. However, these days I would say yes language would exist even if nobody spoke. Just think of all the dictionaries, textbooks, novels, reports, scripts, bibles, sheet music, puzzles, games etc.

So basically although SPOKEN language might cease to exist, language through other means (reading, writing) would still exist and enable humans to communicate with each other. Language IMO is not exclusively restricted to speech and sounds.

I have thought about such existential questions quite a bit.

It occurred to me that

(1) a human thought is at base a pattern of electrical impulses in the form of firing synapses across neurons, the neural network of the mind. Today, we can measure the impulses with fMRI equipment.

(2) Quantitatively, there is a finite amount of possible sequences of synaptic firings giving rise to thoughts. The number of sequences is very large, but it is finite.

So, if one could build a brain, then run an algorithm to simulate all possible synaptic firing sequences, then one could model every possible "thought."

Assigning meaning to the thought pattern is the key to what our conscious reality is all about. Sensory inputs affect thoughts as well.

Different people can assign different meanings to the same thought. For example, someone could find humor in the misfortune of another, while another person would feel empathy.

There is a lot of literature on perception and reality, learning more about how the mind works is fascinating to me. And we are in a good part of history, where the science is beginning to unravel the mystery of consciousness.

S + F for getting my thoughts going

[edit on 27-5-2009 by greenorbs]

Language is but a bunch of noises we make with our throats and scribbles onthin sheets of compressed wood

So really, language means nothing

Can you hear the sound of one hand clapping?

Language is an agreed upon method of communicating one to another. The sounds aren't too important. It's whatever sound that is agreed upon. It's just a label. Different cultures have different labels for different things.

It is believed that Eskimos have upwards of 100 words to describe snow.

I agree with mostlyspoons and Lazyboy

Its nothing more than noise that can be understood same as with a dog barking thats dog language they understand it we dont.

The pattern does preexist otherwise why would all most creatures on earth have the same ability it had to be there before otherwise it would be unique to just humans which its not.

reply to post by greenorbs


Good post and there's a theory about synaptic firig and thought that's pretty interesting.

It's call the CEMI Field theory by Johnjoe McFadden.
www.surrey.ac.uk...

It says the EM Field is where consciousness resides. Neurons networks are local and the EM Field is non local. So every thought or memory is stored in the EM Field.

Here's some more on it:

What we need to look for is something that is a product of the brain’s activity, but which also has the power to influence that activity. Surprisingly, we have known for years that such an entity exists within our brain. The neurons in our brain transmit electrical signals along and between nerve fibres. It is always assumed that the electrons and neurotransmitters moving down these nerves are the movers and shakers of neuronal computation.

However, all electrical circuits - and that’s basically all neurones are – generate an associated energy field, known as an electromagnetic field or em field. This field contains precisely the same information as the circuitry that generated it. However, unlike neuronal information, which is localised in single or groups of neurons, the brain’s em field will bind the neuronal information into a single integrated whole.

www.surrey.ac.uk...

So when we think of a memory it can be accessed immediately in the EM Field.

I think this could tie in to pre-existent information patterns as well, especially if these EM Fields can survive death. I also noticed how Ghost Hunters use what's called an EMF meter and they look for spikes in the electromagnetic field.

I think information is pre-existent and we observe and recognize these pre-existing patterns of information.

Without language, nothing is differentiated from anything else. Read what Helen Keller had to say about her experience of the world before and after she aquired language to describe it..

reply to post by platosallegory


"Does language exists if nobody hears it?" That statement does not exist to me until you revise it.

Now, to your question, from what I can gather.... Ask Chomsky. He wrote a book called "Syntactic Structures". In the book he discusses how the human mind is hard-wired for language and how children pick-up language so quickly, which blows away the born-with-a-blank-slate theory. Chomsky's efforts are also validated by children with autism; this population have challenges in connectivity, the road-map for language is mired and sometimes completely lost.

"Colorless green ideas sleep furiously." Nonsense, yet your brain says "that's a sentence!" Now, reverse it, "Furiously sleep ideas green colorless." Again, nonsense, but in reverse your brain says "that's not a sentence!"

So, to answer your poorly constructed question: no.

reply to post by pluckynoonez


I'm sorry if you have lack of understanding of the question. That's your problem because everyone else who responded in this thread knew exactly what I was talking about.

My advice to you is to get your head out of Chomsky's books and start to think for yourself.

Most Chomsky readers act like mind numb robots and I see you are following suit.

The point of the question is does information patterns pre-exist. It's just like the question does a tree make a sound when it falls in the woods if nobody is there to hear it or when Einstein asked how a beam of light would look if he was riding his motorbike at the speed of light.

These are questions that are designed to provoke thought about the nature of reality.

Of course the cult of Chomsky are to blind to ask questions outside of what they have read.

[edit on 29-5-2009 by platosallegory]

Language is a form of communication and communication has always existed is some form or another.

Speech is a function of communication and and the system of language is based on the determined system by different countries and cultures.

The patterns of language are created, I would say since the same pattern isn't used universally.

Maybe archetypes and symbols are universal language which don't need speech so they would not have to be heard to function.

Thought provoking subject.

Would be fun to have a conversation about at dinner!

reply to post by interestedalways


Good points.

I think there is some universal structure within language and we see this in things like Zipf's law.

Zipf's law states that given some corpus of natural language utterances, the frequency of any word is inversely proportional to its rank in the frequency table. Thus the most frequent word will occur approximately twice as often as the second most frequent word, which occurs twice as often as the fourth most frequent word, etc. For example, in the Brown Corpus "the" is the most frequently occurring word, and by itself accounts for nearly 7% of all word occurrences (69,971 out of slightly over 1 million). True to Zipf's Law, the second-place word "of" accounts for slightly over 3.5% of words (36,411 occurrences), followed by "and" (28,852). Only 135 vocabulary items are needed to account for half the Brown Corpus.

en.wikipedia.org...'s_law

So Chinese, Russian and English all follow the same law. I think this could be because the human biological computer is processing this pre-existing information that's found in 2D space-time.

We can also see it in numbers with things like Benford's law.

Originally posted by platosallegory


en.wikipedia.org...'s_law

So Chinese, Russian and English all follow the same law. I think this could be because the human biological computer is processing this pre-existing information that's found in 2D space-time.

Pretty cool.

I have always been interested in the term "Language of the Birds", hard to find much on it, but drawing none the less.