I just tripped out to this for a while.... and I don't really know anything anymore. But I was thinking how language just preserves the past and allows us to see patterns in it. All words are really just labels.. like labels on soup cans, except they're labels for ideas inside our mind. They're codes that allow you to travel around your brain and connect bits and pieces useful information.
I think memories would still technically be there without language, but we wouldn't be able to access them freely because we wouldn't have the key to that part of our mind. We could probably still manage to function pretty well if we relied only on instinct........what is instinct anyway? It's just another general label for an idea that we don't really understand. Sometimes, what seems to be deliberate thought is really a process of decoding what already exists in the subconscious. Imagine if every morning when you woke up, you had to press one of two buttons to open your bedroom door... the one of the right consistently zapped you when you touched it, and the left button always opened the door. If you couldn't speak a single word, how long do you think it would take before you learned to stay away from the button on the right? If there was another situation later in the day where you had to choose between two buttons, which one do you think you'd try first?
I don't really know what I'm trying to say anymore. Sometimes I look at my dog for a really long time and I think of how good he is at being a dog. He knows whats up with his tail and his four legs and he knows his way around the house and the sound of the garage door and the smell of dog treats and salmon and brussel sprouts and he can express emotions and its possible to feel connected to him and he's still incredibly clueless..so maybe that proves something