Language as a Perceptual System

Several modalities are regarded as constituting perceptual systems: vision, audition, touch, smell, proprioception, and interoception. Perception of speech, studied extensively, has been found to be slightly different from audition in other mammals, but is not therefore regarded as entirely different from other forms of mammalian audition. In comparison, language is regarded as something distinct from any perceptual modality. It is assumed that the function of language is communication, not perception. This assumption presupposes a further assumption: communicating cannot be in the same class of functions as perceiving. But why should one assume that the function - in terms of evolution and epistemology - of either language or communication is not that of a perceptual system? These notes argue that language constitutes an evolved conceptual and perceptual system. It is that combined system (especially in its capacity to transcend space and time, ramifications of the development of consciousness, and the increased capacity for memory) that has made hominins superior to other mammalian life forms. We "perceive" (or more inclusively, conceive) better because we possess language. Language is our presently ultimate (latest, most highly developed) perceptual system. We need to reorient our theories accordingly.