"First the linguists said we had to get our animals to use signs in a symbolic way if we wanted to say they learned language. OK, we did that, and then they said, 'No, that's not language, because you don't have syntax.' So we proved our apes could produce some combinations of signs, but the linguists said that wasn't enough syntax, or the right syntax. They'll never agree that we've done enough." said Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, a primatologist at Giorgia State University, who claims apes have a language capacity.
Language is a system of abstract symbols and the rules in which the symbols are manipulated. For instance the words dog, sag, and cane all mean "dog." The word doesn't sound like its meaning; it is just a sound that has come to represent "dog" in different languages. It is an abstract symbol. Language does not have to be spoken or written. It can be made with gestures, such as American Sign Language.
Syntax is the pattern of formation of sentences or phrases that governs the way the words in a sentence come together. Human language can string phrases together indefinitely to produce an unlimited number of sentences that are all different and have never been said before, yet the words are organized in a hierarchical and recursive way, not just randomly. So if you make a date and are told, "I'll meet you at noon in front of the museum that is by the bank", it is different from "I'll meet you at noon in front of the bank by the museum," and also from the nonsense "Bank at meet in you at museum I'll front of by the the." If language had no syntax, we would just have a bunch of words that you would string together willy-nilly.
Ref: The book Human, by Michael S. Gazzaniga
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