[geoschmo]

AT, you are under the misconception that language is required for understanding. It is not. You don't have to define something in terms of language to be able to understand it. The story of Helen Keller and every other person in that situation proves that.

The human mind is perfectly capable of observing, analyzing, processing, and remembering the environment around us without any concept of language. Each mind will process the information available to it in a different way. There might be similarities in the manner in which we percieve things which are caused by biological factors, but much of it would probably be totally unique to the individual. But what language is neccesary for is communication. Without some common frame of referance, language, we have no way of communicating our observations to each other.

Helen could touch and smell, and she could feel vibrations. She could tell the difference between her mother, her father and a dog. She didn't conceptualize them in those terms, but she had a concept of self identity. She was aware these other people were different from her, and different from each other. She knew what objects in her world were food, and which were water. She even had a rudimentary verbal communication. It was all unintelligable grunts from her families point of view, but there were subtle differences in tone and inflection that had meaning for Helen. The breakthrough for Helen was when her teacher was able to bridge the gap, to make her understand that the hand gestures she was making for Helen were representative of the physical objects. That is the basis of language, using words to represent something tangible, without having to see, or touch in Helens case, the object itself. That was when she started communicating in a meaningful way.

It doesn't mean she didn't have any concept of the world around her before that. She was just incapable of sharing that concept with anyone else.