The problem is that language is not simply a hierarchical representation of reality. Human language involves a number of uniqe specific qualities - enough that I can't list all of them off the top of my head but just for example, symbolic representation.
Sure, an animal represents the world in its brain. But a lot of animals don't get that a symbol in the world can represent another symbol in the world. I know a common example is pointing - only the most representation-adept animals "get" that a person can use their finger to indicate something else.
And this, symbolic representation, is just one aspect of human language broadly.
The problem is that language is not simply a hierarchical representation of reality. Human language involves a number of uniqe specific qualities - enough that I can't list all of them off the top of my head but just for example, symbolic representation.
Sure, an animal represents the world in its brain. But a lot of animals don't get that a symbol in the world can represent another symbol in the world. I know a common example is pointing - only the most representation-adept animals "get" that a person can use their finger to indicate something else.
And this, symbolic representation, is just one aspect of human language broadly.