Click here to order online. Languages Children as young as seven months understand grammatical rules. Apparently, humans do not automatically speak. If this is so, the first humans must have been endowed with a language ability. There is no evidence language evolved.
True language requires both vocabulary and grammar.
With great effort, human trainers have taught some chimpanzees and gorillas to recognize a few hundred spoken words, to point to up to 200 symbols, and to make limited hand signs. These impressive feats are sometimes exaggerated by editing the animals' successes on film. Apes have not demonstrated these skills in the wild and do not pass their communication skills on to others. When a trained animal dies, so does the trainer's investment. Also, trained apes have essentially no grammatical ability.