...well sort of.

>AHH! Multiplicity of colour narritive alert!!! Postmodernist
>on board!!! Actually, that's not to alerting, the pomos are
>everywhere these days to my dismay. But enough of my polemic,
>on to your question of language. I have one simple question.
>Can you imagine language developed outside of material
>existence? In other words, without a physical world for our
>senses to experience, is there any possibility of language?

Yes. Langauge is more than verbal. Before the physical comes the ethereal, the spiritual and emotional. We attach labels to things, to communicate, to describe but not to think. We are not born from eggs, hatching fully formed with a programmed path to live. We need language not only to sense the physical but also to communicate non-verbal messages. We limit our language because our physical world is limited.

>Marx used a useful example to convey this. He stated that the
>word "fruit" is an abstract concept to describe the world of
>oranges, apples, bananas, etc. There is nothing physical about
>the word "fruit" itself. One cannot touch, smell, or taste
>"fruit" in the abstract sense, on can only perform these
>actions on the particular things that the word "fruit"
>describes. Thus without, first, the existence of things we
>call apples, oranges, and bananas, there is no need for the
>linguistic invention of the word "fruit".

One of the infants' first needs is to eat (and breathe). We cry when we are hungry or uncomfortable and this emotional expression is understood in a very general way but in order to communicate more specifically we learn to speak. Until then we use expressions and non-verbal messages. Soon we learn to say fruit (as an example) because that is what the authoritative people call the food we need. We learn to communicate our needs and wants through language but our first "skills" are non-verbal.

>Thus, we first
>experience the material world and then invent language to
>describe what our senses have experienced.

But this world is limited...there is much more that what we see. We picked up on non-verbal messages as babies and children, as much as the words. Knowing how to communicate in all these ways can help unleash unlimited potential, even if it's structured by the existence of society or civilization.

>The same goes for
>your example of a diamond. Without the existence of a shiny
>stone (which themselves are words used to describe something
>that exists materially before we even have the language to
>describe it) we cannot have the word, the concept, "diamond"
>in the first place.

We also listen to those in authority and learn that diamond has more value (in this society) than something like compassion, sensitivity or truth. These latter things are not tangible, not as valued. In addition to learning words to describe things we learn to place more value on material things than emotional or spiritual experiences. As a result, we become attached to the physical, ignore (or repress) the other things. It becomes quite easy to control people (consumers) once they become attached to these "valuable" things, especially if these valuable resources are for sale.

<--- Blame this lady for Nutty.