The functional triangle of language, mind and brain

In a classical perspective a language consists of the set of its words and sentences determined by its lexicon and grammar. Words and sentences are realized as sound patterns and are mentally registered when we hear them as sound patterns or when we identify them as letter figures on paper. Today they can also be realized and identified as letter configurations on the computer screen.

But there is more. When recalling something said to us, the memorized words and sentences appear as sound images in our minds together with our mental understanding of the words’ and sentences’ meanings. We may also learn that, while our mind thinks, understands, or speaks, some of the grey cells in our brain are active. In a naïve understanding it may appear to us that pieces of uttered words and meanings are realized and kept in the brain like being printed on a physiological tabula rasa or in a storage space.

Many linguists disagree with the assumption that our mind images everything that is relevant for speaking or understanding. They emphasize that when we speak correct language we have no conscious image of all aspects of meaning and the rules that determine grammatical correctness. Indeed for speaking and understanding normal words and sentences the system of grammatical regularities is somehow operative, but we almost never have conscious mental images of them. Thus we must assume that the rules of grammar and the rules of lexical word relations can at best be represented structurally in the manner of an abstract system description. The mental system seems to be similar to other systems of rules such as the well learned intuitive competence of the rules of chess. When we are fluent players of chess we play without consciously concentrating at any moment on the rules.