Is it live, or is it Memorex?

First, I note it is not as important to know where our thoughts come from as it whether they are accurate. Discriminated awareness begins at the level of percepts. Percepts constitute the actual starting-point of human knowledge, in the sense that percepts are an animal’s first cognitive contact with reality. 

Our senses provide us with raw information, and beyond the perceptual level, it is our brain that tells us whether the information is accurate or not. The process to determine accuracy is logic (reasoning), and language is primarily a tool of cognition, logic, not a tool of communication.

I think the base of all of concepts, of all of that tremendous cognitive hierarchy which we build, is the perceptual level of awareness, which is the start of man’s knowledge,  the self-evident. We derive all concepts through a logical process from the perception of concrete, specific objects. Concepts or abstractions as such, do not exist. They are a method of classifying that which exists.

A valid concept must be connected by reduction to its base in perceptual reality. On the higher level of abstraction, that connection consists of a long chain of concepts formed from earlier concepts formed from still earlier concepts and so on. To be grasped or used, every concept in that chain requires a precise definition. It is only by using a precise definition that a higher-level concept can be reduced or brought back or connected with its base in perceptual reality.

In other words, we build ideas from what we already know. So, back to the question: what comes first: ideas or words? I think the answer depends upon what level of the perception-abstraction continuum one is discussing. I do not see a “paradox of articulation.” What I do see is either an inarticulate question or the Fallacy of the False Alternative in trying to make you say one or the other of these two choices is correct, when at least a third possibility exists.