I emailed Chomsky a month back about Thoughts and Language. I hope he doesn't mind that I'm sharing it.
My email,<p>I was fascinated by your talk at British Academy. I'm no linguist. Please Ignore my ignorance.<p>If the formal language is not designed for communication but for our thoughts, Is it not the case that there are two different mechanisms of perception? One to understand internal language (if I can call it a language) and external language we use socially? It is bewildering. As I type this email, I'm thinking of the words that needs to be followed. Because of my ability for pattern recognition or for the conceptual understanding of rules of the external language. I'm not sure if my ability is a natural phenomenon or a self trained one(as far as English is concerned). English is not my native language. It is acquired by study. Recently, My thoughts have been primarily in English. I could switch between English and my native language for thoughts.<p>Is language the only way to think? Is it crazy to think that our brain does not use language to think at all? Can thoughts/perception , like language, have two different mechanism. Understanding external logic and internal logic? The internal system might be visual, physical etc. It seems to lead to a structure problem. Does internal thoughts have far more complex structure? If dreams are thoughts, It is extremely complex and might be a evidence that there are different systems. I strongly think it is because we have different involuntary mechanisms to perceive like sense of smell etc.<p>Chomsky's reply,<p>Very little is understood about the interesting questions you’re raising. To study them we’d have to have a way of accessing thinking by some means that does not involve conscious use of language – which is probably a superficial reflection of something happening within. But so far there are no good ways.