Noam Chomsky is dumb. He doesn’t think communication is language’s primary purpose, he thinks language is a perfect formal system disconnected from gesture, intonation, and context. It’s no wonder, then, that he is mystified by how a beautiful grammar could evolve from a messy primate brain, and how he could imagine that a computer would make a better speaker than a human being.

When you watch people communicate, they use language in a very messy, haphazard way. No wonder Chomsky prefers his syntax trees and his “colorless green ideas.” But what purpose is language if it is only used to structure our thoughts? Probably ninety percent of thoughts are not particularly deep or complex, and probably ninety percent of utterances are used to communicate those not-particularly-complex thoughts to other people. It’s easy to think them without language, but it’s difficult to communicate them without language — and languages tend to be at their best when expressing those simple ideas of everyday existence.

I’ve started reading The First Word, which is a very good book indeed. I was jumping up and down when I discovered that apes can actually learn language — not just vocabulary, but syntax! and they make up compound words! — and that dolphins can go so far as to reject grammatically ill-formed sentences! The three-year-old humans of the world are getting some competition, I tell you.

Of course, humans are very defensive about their — I mean our — abilities. Thomas is especially vehement about our general superiority to other species, even if we don’t have a monopoly on any one thing in particular. I don’t quite understand this point of view myself, as in most ways (other than intelligence) we’re inferior to other species, and also because the top of the heap is a lonely place to be.

We have our inventions and imaginations — traits that I wouldn’t trade even for wings — but does that make us objectively better? Why are some people so threatened every time the line between humans and nonhuman animals is blurred? It’s not a competition, yet they want to win anyway. All I have to say is: calm down. I don’t seriously think the squid are ready to take over the world. (Yet.)

Language isn’t miraculous if other animals have linguistic capabilities, too — humans just evolved to take advantage of a latent potential for syntax and a theory of mind. To my mind, there’s no reason to posit a pre-ordained universal grammar when communication takes a more heuristics approach. Children figure it out as they go along, just like when they learn to walk.

On the other hand, if bonobos, parrots, and dolphins can figure some of it out, too, then maybe Chomsky is onto something after all: they might be thinking with language even without humans around to show them how to communicate with it. I don’t really think that’s the case, though, since animals — including humans — simply can’t learn much language if they weren’t introduced young enough.

Could it be that language is something that any brain with sufficient neurons can pick up? Is the only reason humans use it all the time because a couple geniuses in the last ice age invented a code for communication, and we’ve just been passing it along ever since? I should probably finish this book on “The Search for the Origins of Language” I have sitting in front of me before my imagination gets carried away. What revelations of linguistics await when I turn the page?

Flip.