Some aspects of verbal communication don’t have any particular conceptual content to them – rather they are there to form or to maintain a connection between persons. For instance, “How are you?” is not primarily a request for information but a means of forging contact with another human being, as is asking about the weather, at least in Britain.
Communication for Communion series
Communication for Communion, Part 3: Babel and Pentecost (Scholar’s Call)
But was there ever a language in which the totality of a thing in its essence was communicated fully in words?
Communication for Communion, Part 2: The Quest for the Adamic Language (Scholar’s Call)
So what language did Adam and Eve speak in the Garden of Eden? This was a question of significant interest in the early modern period (around the 16th and 17th centuries).
Communication for Communion: Language Human and Divine, Part 1 (Scholar’s Call)
Excerpt: Language is one of the things that make humans human. Whilst there are other instances of communication in the animal kingdom, some employing relatively complex sets of signals by which animals express engagement with one another and with their physical environment, we have no evidence that non-human creatures can express abstract mental concepts such as those we are discussing today.