> Language requires grammar and vocabulary

Which OP demonstrates through a tokenized vocabulary

Only things for which you have parsing rules and a parser and a thing that can form sentences. This is literally the CS definition. It just doesn’t require consciousness.

Truly random tappings on a tree are not language, but if a type of bird signals that predators are nearby by striking a tree with their beak with consistent rules that are understood by other birds or creatures, then you have language. But you would have us not study these things because you think they are beneath us. I would instead say we are nothing special, and thus everything is special, or at least historically we always miss out on scientific insight when we arrogantly assume humans have X but other life forms do not.

Show me two rocks where one forms a sentence and another one parses it and sure.

Now if your definition of language is something arrogant like “a system of communication where combinations of tokens are given semantic meaning that correspond with conscious states and phenomena” then I would say that is incredibly limiting and ignores the preponderance of language all around you both in nature and technology. If someone builds a computer that can parse x86 assembly, it doesn’t cease to be parsing language if I stipulate that humans never existed and this computer just happens to exist. The tree still falls in the forest even if there is no human consciousness there to perceive it and the same goes for language. If it is encoded by something and decoded by something else fairly consistently (fuzzy is fine if the communication is still generally effective) then you have language.

More importantly the existence of unconscious systems that can generate and parse sentences in arbitrary languages means consciousness isn’t very relevant or necessary when analyzing language and perhaps focusing on it too much actually gets in the way of meaningful research and discovery.

We have formal definitions, it’s anything that can have a grammar, these definitions are incredibly broad, big endian two’s compliment integer encoding has a grammar consisting of two tokens, 0 and 1. All you need is something that can form a sentence and something that can parse it and the thing going on between them is language. Languages vary in complexity but the floor for that is way lower than you are thinking. Simple languages consisting of one or two tokens are still languages.

I love how arrogant humans get when you hit at their “that’s supposed to be a human thing!” nerve. Sign language is language, dance is language, writing is language, speaking is language, semaphores in a sail boat is language, Morse code is language, two’s complement is language, a mushroom communicating with other mushrooms with a small vocabulary of tokens is language, to think otherwise is incredibly small minded.

You don’t need consciousness or phenomena or quailia to have language. Heck, every computer understands some sort of language. ChatGPT is capable of conversing in English better than anyone in this room, and it doesn’t need consciousness or any of that stuff to do it. Language is neither unique nor special.