Parrots and Learned Language

In response to Andrew; one can find his post here

On a related note, parrots have a learned language system. We don't really know how complex it is, but, at the very least, they learn there own "names" (a certain type of call) and have "names" for their homes and certain locations that they frequent. Parrots' names are similar to the names of the parents who raised them rather than the names of their biological parents. This has led to some jokes (of a sort, since they are kind of true) about parrot surnames; parrots have names based on their parents, which goes back for many generations. Many scientists are excited to continue to study parrot communication in hopes that so doing will help us to learn about how our languages developed.

I've been thinking about this quite a bit recently, and I think, as far as my knowledge can take me, that a learned language must have some kind of grammatical structure. Additionally, I think that the emphasis on learning is highly important to gauging how well an animal understands; if it can learn, then it must be able to understand, I think. Human children, for instance, have not learned any language that allows them to express their thoughts, still, in order to learn languages successfully, they have to make non(pre?)-lingual connections that allow them to associate a sound with an object. So, if human children have this ability of non-lingual understanding, I think it is safe to say that many other animals also have that capacity.

I am certainly no expert in the way of knowledge about pre-lingual cognition, so I cannot say everything without a doubt; I am sure there is much confusion about it in the scientific community too.