Bonobos use a kind of syntax once thought to be unique to humans

It is funny how at least the press written about this sort of research seems to imply only humans have language and some new evidence might challenge that notion.

Really if you ever own a pet, probably any pet I bet, you find that communication in a way that is arguably a language is pretty low level stuff in the animal kingdom. And it makes sense as it is quite useful for a species to communicate things about the world. You turn your community into a meta organism: rather than continuous appendages and nerve endings you might have a meerkat a couple hundred yards observing for predators for you sharing their own senses on their own body with you through their long distance communication abilities in the form of their vocalizations or body language. Now you can solely be a meerkat and get all this information about the area without having to evolve into some lovecraftian horror with a set of eyes and ears every 100 yards.

The study of human language is linguistics. A related study is “human language” compared to some other “[animal] language”. Chomsky has argued that “human language” is categorically different from some, say, other primate “language”.

As soon as you have a scientific pursuit you need to define it. Somehow. And it isn’t gonna be close to some intuitive notion of “language”. Because that’s just, I dunno, any kind of semiotics to us average persons. (Is your pet jumping up on your leg and wagging its tail communicating meaning? Yeah)

So of course there’s gonna be some definition of language, and maybe even a scientific consensus one way or the other with regards to sundries questions, like if other animals have “language” similar to “human language”. And it’s gonna have very little overlap with people vibing with their pets.