In linguistics, animal language acquisition (ALA) refers to controversial claims and experiments which assert, or are otherwised based in a view that non-human animals hold abilities for generating and communicating the symbols of abstract language, though they have not manifest such abilities in nature. The field of cognitive linguistics generally holds that language is innate to each species as developed by a long processes of natural selection (ie. evolution) for the purpose of survival. Hence CL holds it to be unwise to believe that an animal species has the capacity for abstract language if it has not already developed and manifest such an ability. Linguistics is the scientific study of human language, and someone who engages in this study is called a linguist or linguistician. ... Phyla Porifera (sponges) Ctenophora (comb jellies) Cnidaria (coral, jellyfish, anenomes) Placozoa (trichoplax) Subregnum Bilateria (bilateral symmetry) Acoelomorpha (basal) Orthonectida (flatworms, echinoderms, etc. ... Cognitive linguistics is a school of linguistics and cognitive science, which aims to provide accounts of language that mesh well with current understandings of the human mind, and is generally opposed to the more syntactocentric approaches to meaning in generative linguistics. ... A speculatively rooted phylogenetic tree of all living things, based on rRNA gene data, showing the separation of the three domains, bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotes, as described initially by Carl Woese. ...

Where research into understanding native animal language may slow and hard to translate and interpret, experiments in ALA typically propose that animals can (to some degree or other) acquire aspects of human speech or signing which will quickly reveal (or jumpstart) an ability to communicate symbolically with humans.

Washoe, Nim Chimpsky, et al. Washoe (chimpanzee) Washoe County, Nevada Washoe Native American tribe Washoe language Note that in the second and third reference, the alternative spelling Washo appears to be equally valid. ... Nim Chimpsky (1973-March 10, 2000) was a chimpanzee named in mock honor of linguist Noam Chomsky. ...