A: Well, there are basically two fundamental things that are species properties of humans, common to the species, no analogue elsewhere. One of them is what we’re now using, language. It’s essentially the core of our being. It sets us totally apart from the animal world. Another species property is, simply, thought. As far as we know, there’s no thinking in the world, or maybe in the universe, in anything comparable to what we have. And the two are closely linked — language is the instrument of thought and the means for formulating thought in our mind, sometimes externalizing at others. These two capacities seem to have emerged together probably about the same time as Homo sapiens. They’re common to all humans, apart from severe pathology. And there are no analogues in the animal world. In fact, there may not be any anywhere, as far as we know.
A: One of the striking things about language, which greatly impressed the founders of the Scientific Revolution — Galileo and his contemporaries — is what is sometimes called the creative aspect of human thought. We are somehow capable of constructing in our minds an unbounded array of meaningful expressions. Mostly, it happens beyond consciousness. Sometimes, it emerges to consciousness. We can use these in a way which is appropriate to situations and constantly in new ways, often which are new in the history of the language in our own history. This creative character through the centuries has been connected speculatively, but not absurdly, to a fundamental instinct for freedom, which is
— source chomsky.info | Jan 23, 2022