> Is there a level of consciousness prior to language that willfully assembles the next word out of more subtle mind stuff? There would be an infinite regress here.
What? No, it's not infinite. Thoughts are more fundamental than language, you can absolutely have a thought and then struggle to express it in language (indeed this is a pretty common experience). For an experienced writer or speaker the translation from thought to language may be so smooth as to almost disappear (to the point they may not even be conscious of it), but it's still happening.
Ok great! So where does the pre-language thought come from? Does that one spontaneously appear, or is it too assembled from even more subtle mind stuff by a conscious agent?
Once in possession of a pre-language thought, how does a conscious agent craft it into language? Does it open an internal dictionary and find the best fit? Are the dictionary entries appearing spontaneously or are they too conjured agentically somehow?
You can't keep going asserting a conscious, agentic process at every level. At some point you have to concede that what is available to a conscious agent is being offered by totally unconscious, "spontaneous" processes
Thoughts appear spontaneously (at least some of the time) as far as one's consciousness is concerned, sure. But language and sentences don't. That's all I'm claiming.
What? No, it's not infinite. Thoughts are more fundamental than language, you can absolutely have a thought and then struggle to express it in language (indeed this is a pretty common experience). For an experienced writer or speaker the translation from thought to language may be so smooth as to almost disappear (to the point they may not even be conscious of it), but it's still happening.