Something to think about

If you could judge a book by its cover, you'd never read Language and Human Behavior by Derek Bickerton.

But you can't, and you should.

Among the many, many thrilling ideas in this book is the suggestion that we all think largely in words. That we need words to think. That these concepts are linked, and that language produces thought.

I don't know about you, but to me, that's a thrilling idea. I naturally want to conclude that by extending our language, we extend our ability to think. I've found this to be true myself, as, I expect, have you.

But there are languages that encompass different concepts from our own—concepts that are inexpressible in English. What are we missing by not having words for those ideas? How much are we limited by this? And to that point, how much are we limited by the vocabularies we do have, which certainly represent only small portions of the total the language has to offer?

If you're going to concern yourself passionately with some issue that's completely beyond your control, and reasonably ethereal to boot, Derek Bickerton will give you something to think about.