The conventional wisdom in psycholinguistics in the 1980s was that thought is like external language in all important respects. Each of us, the argument went, comes genetically equipped with a 'language of thought' that is reflected in the structure and organization of speech. Thought is not remotely similar to perception or imagery, or to the exercise of motor skills. The basic rules governing human thought and language were believed to be largely unique and substantially innate, the result of genetic novelty. Understand language, and — the psycholinguists used to say — you understand thought.
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