[Xmca-l] Thought and language as oscillating and pulsing [or not]

[Larry Purss]

Martin will be sending us an article on Shpet.
I therefore did some background exploration and discovered that Shpet and
Vygotsky differed on the notion of "oscillation".
Vygotsky believed thought and language oscillated while Shpet disagreed.

Zinchenko clarifies Vygotsky's understanding in this paragraph
that Zinchenko wrote in his chapter "Thought and Word, the Approaches of L.
S. Vygotsky and G. G. Shpet": It uses the metaphor of rain [which I
associated with the other thread on rain]

     "Thought and word are no less polyphonic than mind.  Yet, there is a
long way to go to arrive at this conclusion.  And it is hard to
overestimate the input of Shpet and Vygotsky, along with Aleksandr Potebnya.
     Out of all the polyphony of mind and thought, out of all the various
possibilities of origins, Shpet and Vygotsky   gave their preference to the
word, although they understood it differently.  Let us start from
Vygotsky's metaphorical description: *What is simultaneous in thought is
successive in language.*  It would be possible to compare a thought with a
cloud that showers a rain of words.  This is why the transition from
thought to language is a very complicated process of *dismemberment* of a
thought and its recreation in a word.  On the next page, Vygotsky wrote,
'continuing this picturesque comparison, we should liken the motivation of
thought to the wind that sets the clouds in motion.'  If something can *pour
itself, *it means that it already exists.  Therefore we can understand the
given metaphor as saying that thought, already existing is *expressed *in a
word"  [emphasis in the original]

This quote draws attention to Vygotsky perceiving *oscillation *behind the
movement of thought and language. Shpet did not see thought and language as
oscillating.  Zinchenko's goal in his article is not to place the
approaches of Shpet and Vygotsky in opposition but to present them as
mutually complimentary approaches.

I hope to learn from others on the complexity of the notions of
oscillating movement of thought and language situated within words.
Polyphonic notions