Hey BB,
Glad a linguistics specialist joined the conversation. Could you perhaps explain to me the difference between "speech" and "communication"? I was always under the (quite possibly erroneus) impression that speech was simply one
form of communcation. Lots of organisms, as has been repeatedly pointed out on this thread, can communicate with their conspecifics, but only a tiny handful have the ability to communicate using something that could justifiably represent "speech" (humans of course, dolphins probably, a few specially trained gorillas or chimps, etc). Or am I completely off-base here?
PS: Welcome to the forum.