Symbolic semantics might be an accessory rather than a necessity

[Bitking]

I weigh in with language production is a learned motor task. (imitating speech)
The speaker learns to associate a sound or motion with the perceived learning of symbols and in the process progresses to symbolic thinking and semantics in later stages.
We are because we talk!

Language the base of conscious thought?

Language is partly innate and partially learned. We have the necessary mental hardware but without the social training, we can’t learn the tricks that come with developing the motor skills that we call language. Learning these motor skills come with a corresponding training of the matching sensory skill set. Part of this learned skill set is symbolic representation. There are sad cases of people that are raised without learning language past the critical period for language plasticity. It has …