The problem with words is that they force our brains to think discretely... e.g. either the animal is consciousness or it is not.

Thinking along a continuum, i.e. that there's a spectrum of consciousness, is more difficult.

There's no one event in the lifetime of a embryo - fetus - baby - infant - juvenile - adult, where it suddently becomes conscious.

The brain is still developing into late teens - early 20s, and then it peaks and starts to die in the late 20s, so consciousness is always in flux.

Question - if language is the foundation to human consciousness through the ability to manipulate abstract concepts, are people with large vocabularies more "conscious" than people with people with small vocabularies? Can they have more thoughts?