There are a few things here. First) This is correct in a trivial and incorrect in profound ways. Trivial Correct: Clearly language is, at best, a lossy channe

There are a few things here. First) This is correct in a trivial and incorrect in profound ways. Trivial Correct: Clearly language is, at best, a lossy channel for thought. It isn't thought compressed, it is thought where the map would be too complex for language and so we draw a kindergarten scribble we all agree on, and that covers a lot of ground as a an imperfect pointer. This description is itself imperfect, but as a rough sketch not too controversial. Profound Incorrect: As pointers, it facilitates thought in complex ways that would be incredible difficult otherwise. Abstractions you can build on like building blocks and, so long as your careful about understanding where the word ends and doesn't encompass the full thing, you reduce the risk of reifying the word overmuch. It's not thought, but is isn't thought in some-- not all-- of the ways in which a building's walls is not its interior spaces. Of course it isn't. The space would be there either way, but keeping it all arranged so nicely and easily to reference different elements of it, that is more than just convenience and it is inextricable from language, or at least some representational system for doing this sort of thing. Second) It is so strange to see this sort of thing written about, in this way, as if it were a new conception, a new view of language. But then I look at the researchers involved: near always backgrounds outside the formal study of linguistics, language itself, and instead focused in other areas adjacent or related. Even computational linguistics-- perhaps especially computational linguistics. The educational pathway there is much more commonly coming from computational paths to applications to language, rather than vice versa. This is much less the case with Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, where traditional biology is much more often within a student's foundation. (This is not anecdotal, analysis of student pathways through academic studies is a past area of my own professional career) Through the lens of the history of academia over the past few decades, this is not all that surprising. Chomsky's fault (my opinion) for trying to wall off the discipline from other areas of study or perspective other than his own.