Look at us. Communicating abstract thoughts like two humans.
Dogs and cats seem to have some recognition of other animals names. I don’t know how far it goes though. Maybe “Jack” means “me” and “Duke” means “him”. Or in some cases “Duke” means “me”, because Duke’s a dog, and “Jack” means “cat” because “Jack” is a cat. Or “Jack” means “me” to Jack, and “Duke” means “any other animal that I have to share space with”. Then there’s our cat Lips who may have thought “Maybe this time they’ll tell me why I have this weird name?” if he came when we called him. It’s always difficult to tell because of their limited ability to communicate.
Let’s not forget this lesson from the great teacher about animal behavior:
Indeed. This made me think of when I’d walk our two labs (Ozzie and Jack!) and my son would walk our senior Basset, Cindy (who has since passed 
). This was out of necessity, since the boys walked at a quick pace, and Cindy definitely did not.
Anyway, if the route we took found us seeing Cindy down the road a hundred yards or so, they’d have their normal agitation over encountering a dog, until I’d say, “That’s Cindy!” Then they’d calm down and wag their tails as we got close enough to say hello.
So, just a little more ammunition that dog names have some form of symbolic identification for our canine friends.
They would always be in the trash. Oh, wait, same problem. Never mind.
Using the definition of “understanding the concept of language” the OP is using, which I wouldn’t necessarily agree with but is fair enough, I suppose I don’t see why you wouldn’t expect dogs to be able to do so.
Understanding a concept and being able to do the thing aren’t really intrinsically tied, the way I look at it. My dogs definitely understand the concept of food showing up when I open the can, but they can’t open it. They understand that people are inside cars but they can’t make cars or drive cars or open doors. And they can’t make the sounds I make but they understand what usually happens when I make them.
That reminds me. Our last standard poodle Sarah loved the car. She knew she was supposed to be in the back, but when I let her in, she’d jump to the front driver’s seat and put her paws on the steering wheel. I could just tell she must have been thinking, <<Some day I’ll make it go, too.>>
Yep, that’s why the “stand” command is important.
Our dog Kizzy is doing agility work. Her latest cool command is “pause”. Kizzy is too fast for my gf to keep up with, but she has to stay ahead to give commands and signals.
When Kizzy reaches the end of the A-Frame, for example, my gf gives the pause command which is just stopping for 2 seconds. That gives my gf a jump start to sprint toward whatever is next.
Never believe a dog that tells you they know how to drive. My dog Blackjack said he used to drive a truck. An automatic maybe, but there’s no way he could drive a stick.
In particular, “Genie”, the feral child who was rescued after her language development stage had ended, was able to learn a fair number of words, but had a much harder time with the concept of grammar. She was able to combine words, but in a very haphazard way.
I’ve seen some examples of her “sentences”. They’re things like “Get out baby buggy!”, or “Judy my finger caught door”, or even “Elevator hurt silly goose”.
Now, dogs (at least the smarter ones) probably do grasp that humans are able to communicate with other humans better than we can with dogs, or dogs with each other. To that extent, they recognize that language exists. But they still don’t know the details.
Which brings me back to my OP.
I’m wondering if there is some biological overlap between our brains and those of other mammals; do we have similar structure in certain areas of our brains that would show that these other animals also think about communication in ways similar to us?
Google tells me that “Broca’s area” is the part of the brain that connects thoughts to speech? Is that the unique part of our brain? Or is it too simplistic to look for such a biological connection?
It’s not just our ability to enunciate. Others have cited that dogs and cats have something in the vicinity of 40-50 different vocalizations, which is about the same as the number of phonemes in English (44, from a quick Google, though it’d vary a bit by dialect). But the areas of the brain in charge of language are much more developed in humans than they are in any other mammal (comparisons to non-mammals are more difficult, because they have different brain structures).
Interesting. This thread has given me a purported answer to my OP.
Our dogs understand language as well as a child | 13newsnow.com.
So dogs do have the same brain structure for language that humans do; it’s just not as developed. That suggests to me something innate in their makeup, albeit something derived from selective breeding.
I’ve seen videos of parrots identifying the type of material (rock, metal, paper) they’re presented with.
There are several dogs on Youtube who talk to their owners by pressing buttons. It is hard to know how much is rote training, how much is deliberate from the dog, and how much is Clever Hans and over-interpretation by the humans.
Bunny seems like he smartest to me. In this video, he says “mad. help”, which his owner interprets in context to mean “open the door so I can chase those birds”. I like the way Bunny turns to the door and lifts his head when the owner mentions “birds”. It definitely looks like they are communicating. I also like the “hi cat” when the cat meows. It seems intentional. Not sure what to make of “I dog we friends”. What does a dog mean by friends? Bunny has a lot of videos that talk about dogs and humans, which is very intriguing, but it’s hard to know what to make of it.
Mila can use her buttons to ask to go potty outside, but she can also say when the other dog in the house wants to go, even if she herself doesn’t. Mila’s videos really show how much interpretation the humans do. Her communications are often just one word, and even when she uses more, she has no set word order. But she does seem to use the buttons/words as symbols to communicate.
(It looks like these animals have a lot of buttons, and are maybe just pressing them at random, but they start with one, and more are added gradually as they learn.)
I think dogs and cats understand some human language, and, to a lesser degree, can speak linguistically. But I doubt they understand the concept of language.
You can hear your car making noises, and assign meaning to them and act accordingly. That’s obviously not understanding the concept of language.
I had to wonder about a particularly clever cat we had. Most of our cats respond by name, which I find about as linguistic as me responding to the beep when the microwave is finished. But this cat, when I would call another cat, would often turn to look specifically at the called cat. It was spooky.
Our dogs know “Wait” and the command “Break” which is a relief from wait. We use those for when we are taking them for a walk. I always go first, while they wait at the open door. I want to check things out before I give them the break command and let them out/take them for a walk The break command releases them from ANY previous command, sit, place, heal.
They will wait while I prepare their food. I then give them the break.
We had professional help getting these dogs to mind us. Border collie mixes. Very smart dogs. I’ve had dogs all my life, I can train them, but they where getting a little out of control.
I think they do understand the concept of language, but they’re not very good at it. I don’t mean that’s a deep understanding of the concept of language at all, but I’m sure that dogs sometimes understand that I’m trying to tell them something in words that they don’t comprehend. Since dog’s hearing is usually just as good as humans then comprehension of words is clearly limited by their ability to process language in their brains. For their ability to speak experiments might be indicating that their ability to communicate with words slightly exceeds what we’ve found so far relying on vocalization and simple pointing.
Still, there seems to be a lot standing in the way of dogs and/or cats exceeding their ability to use language to communicate than we have already seen. And I think it’s mainly a lack of a brain optimized for language the way ours is. It’s not necessarily a limit on their ability to communicate, but their ability to use language for that function.
My dog says “Woof”
Are we defining language as verbal/sound-making? Because all animals, including human beings, use body language to communicate.
For example, one could have this dialogue:
Want to have a drink?
No, thanks, I’m good.
Okay, then. Let’s go.
You go ahead.
And do it entirely with gestures and facial expressions. Cats and dogs (and horses, as I’ve observed) communicate a great deal via body language. Also, there’s sign language among the deaf.
Well, my dog is deaf. We’ve taught it to understand signs for stand, sit, stay, come, bow, food, ball, and a few other basic commands, He understands enough (after hundreds of repetitions and rewards for performing) to know that if we make a certain movement, he’s supposed to respond in a certain way. But I don’t think you can call that “language” so much as “responses to patterns of movement.”