Here is a nice little video related to the book:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/steven_pinker_on_language_and_thought.html

“To be able to think about something, we need to give it a name first.”

… A square could be thought about before anyone came up with a name for it, just like the squiggly drawing which currently does not have a name and probably never will.

Sometimes we give names to things as a kind of shorthand. One may think about the idea of working from home, using ones home computer – and later come up with the name “telecommute”, for example. The word becomes a convenience.

We do not have a word for the person who talks really long on their cell phone in public yet.

Only thing I kind of miss in it is, what do you at all consider as “[human] language”? I think that could help a lot on the whole quest for definition.

What I mean – do you e.g. consider gramatical rules to be part of language?

As for your remark, that “Language is the ultimate compression engine.”, I can agree only partly.

First thing to say, it’s definitely a loosy compression; how often people run into trouble of “not having enough words to express the thought”?

Not only that, in my opinion, language has a (much) lower “dimension” than thought, so to say. Language in fact seems to me as just a projection of thought (or, since language is so often very helpful in expressing thoughts, maybe it could be called “Poincare map of thought”
How often it happens to you, that in evening you write down a note to yourself about an amazing idea, and in morning you’re wondering what it’s supposed to mean?
I guess that would be my reply to “On the other hand, if the code of language does get cracked soon, will it mean that human thought is not so complex after all?”

As for your remark: “When one thinks hard to solve a problem, it is likely he or she uses bits of language in self-communication to focus attention on particular aspects, annotate the intermediate results, and proceed one by one onto higher level steps.”
I can’t agree more, and this is a very helpful point. Also, it raises 2 interesting questions: 1) “Could he/she solve the same set of problems without the use of words?” and 2) “Is language artificial or natural phenomenon to our brain?”.

What I mean – 1) Words are very helpful in solving problems; in fact, they’re in my opinion brains “up-to-down” decomposition equivalent. [can't remember after of the following quote, sorry] “Originality is to give name to things that do not have a name yet.” And “To be able to think about something, we need to give it a name first.”
2) This question might seem weird to be asked, but why are people the only ones to use such a complex system of expressing oneself? [or, if not the only ones, at least one of very few animal kinds]
Is language “natural milestone” on the path of evolution, or it’s artificial concept that is specific only to humans?