Without language, what form would our thoughts take? They'd have to be primitive and may only take the form of mental images. We might see ourselves going through the necessary survival basics without being able to fully understand them.
Communication without language? Oh, yeah. There's a passage in one of the classics (Horatio Hornblower, perhaps?) where a seaman is brought up before the captain on a charge of striking an officer. His defence was something like, "I had no words to answer him, so I answered with my fists." Violence is the language of the inarticulate.
Many years ago Mrs Didge and I were dancing at a German wine cellar in Sydney's King's Cross and, at the end of the night, everybody was saying Auf weidersehn so we joined in. There were three big guys standing together and when we said it to them one said, "Non Allemande. Russki." I guess they had a little French and I had my schoolboy French enough to understand them. So we had an enthusiastic conversation, them speaking Russian, we speaking English, and parted the best of friends.
--- Now I have a personal complaint for you, Randy. Yesterday I used a singular verb (which was correct) with "criteria" (which wasn't). I didn't change it but placed a correction in the comments box so that you could come and kick my butt. And you didn't. Very disappointing. :)
