Is Language a Substrat of Thought?

Pinker: Language is not a substrate of thought. As in like you can think without language. And Pinker says instead, like basically every generation of children kind of like can invent a language,. Like can invent a grammar. Then the next generation generate the full grammar combining the words. So they have been thinking about how do we use language to instruct robots? If robots don't have this generation process, like how does the language that we're using map to their representations?