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FIRST CONCEPTS. “Conceptual thinking only became possible with verbal language and our first concepts were our first words. These words acting as concepts linked to and representing all the percepts associated with those words.” https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-59177-9_13 View in LinkedIn

EARLY COMMUNICATION. “Before verbal language, we lived in a world of percepts. Our communication was mimetic consisting of hand signals, facial gestures, body language and non-verbal prosody or tones such as grunts and whines. We could only communicate about the here and now.” https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-59177-9_13 View in LinkedIn

SET THEORY. “The human mind is a product of the brain and verbal language as was argued in The Extended Mind: The Emergence of Language, the Human Mind and Culture (Logan 2007), but verbal language as we have argued was dependent on the ability of humans to think in terms of sets employing a primitive form of set theory.” https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-59177-9_13 View in LinkedIn

HYPOTHESIS. “It is believed that first came verbal language and then mathematical thought. But I suggest otherwise. The origin of verbal language, the origin of the mind and the origin of mathematic thinking all happened at approximately the same time and that these three elements are basically interlinked. Human verbal language was as much a product of mathematical thinking as mathematics was a product of verbal language.” https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-59177-9_13 View in LinkedIn

THE EVOLUTIONARY CHAIN. “Having demonstrated how speech, writing and mathematics are interlinked we now turn to show how they are actually part of a larger evolutionary chain of interlinked languages composed of speech, writing, mathematics, science, computing and the Internet.” https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-59177-9_13 View in LinkedIn

CONCEPTS. “Abstract thinking and language cannot be separated. Only humans are capable of verbal language, abstract thought, mathematics and conceptualization.” (Again, some would take issue with this). https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-59177-9_13 View in LinkedIn

BOOKKEEPING ORIGINS. “Writing was invented by accountants and not by writers, but writers harnessed the accountant’s idea of creating written symbols for spoken words. And mathematicians harnessed the accountant’s idea of notating abstract numbers to develop a notation for mathematics that led to more sophisticated mathematical thinking.” https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-59177-9_13 View in LinkedIn

INFINITE SCOPE. “Our ability to use verbal language is what differentiates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. Other animals are capable of communicating with each other but the range of what they can express is limited to a small number (less than 50) of signals. Human verbal language, on the other hand, is generative so there are an infinite number of possible messages or meaning that we are capable of composing and communicating.” (Not quite true, the nematode vocabulary is hundreds). https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-59177-9_13 View in LinkedIn

CLAY TABLET WRITING. “The impressed token shape signs for the large and small measure of wheat came to represent the numerals 10 and 1 respectively. The second class of signs, etched signs representing the commodities and hence represented words. The Sumerians quickly realized that they could represent spoken words other than agricultural commodities with etched signs and so writing emerged to represent spoken language and also abstract numbers.” https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-59177-9_13 View in LinkedIn

THE ABSTRACT BECOMES POSSIBLE. “Without verbal language our mental life would be reduced to feelings, emotions, and the processing of our perceptions as is the case with all other forms of life. Verbal language makes conceptualization, abstraction and reflection possible.” https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-59177-9_13 View in LinkedIn