[beaned]

Language is for both. Every concept is tied to a label that is a word. We identify pieces of reality by their common attributes while omitting their specific measurements, and attach these identifications to a label which is a word. It is a unique ability that we have as humans, which no other animal shares. It is essential for rational thought. Communication may have been an evolutionary forcing function on our ability to conceive generally (rather than simply perceive), but communication is still downstream from having concepts to communicate.

[pama]

Take a detailed look at an abstract painting and you might form thousands of unlabeled concepts per second; examine life in a microscope; listen to complex instrumental music; taste spicy/tingly XiAn noodles; smell a forest in the fall after the rain: there is a ton of thought involved in common human function without the need or ability of using language. A serialized version of language is too slow to capture parallel complex ideas that can race through your brain in an emergency and save your life. Learning how to use words is useful but there are not enough combinations of words in the world for the richness of thought you can experience in a single morning, in a single breath. We have way too many smell receptors in our genome and way too few words formed for the smell combinations we experience daily. We can recollect experiences, or we can visualize generate experiences in our mind; I dont see a reason we would label every internal or external experience and we certainly dont have to forget or not imagine all the parts we havent labeled yet.

[larsrc]

"It is a unique ability that we have as humans, which no other animal shares."

Dogs at least can learn that, too. Probably also cats. Using buttons to express themselves has proven that. Hell, even our dog, who never figured out the buttons, understood that "bed" meant "soft thing next to human's bed", not "the particular bed I usually sleep in".

Humans are merely a lot better at communicating this, having a more complex speech apparatus.