They can sense the basic features of the world: colors, textures, edges, movements, sounds, tastes, smells, consistencies, hardnesses. To survive in their world, these people, like us, have evolved nervous systems that allow them to find these regularities in their world.
(We'll let our people be vegetarians.) The world is also regular in terms of what happens: the regular appearance of celestial bodies and seasons the inevitability of rain following certain kinds of clouds the way certain animals run away and others attack when they are confronted the way other members of the tribe respond to friendliness, flirtation, rejection, and aggression. There are objects around them with characteristic properties: rocks that tend to be hard but to break when they are hit hard enough plants that tend to be soft and have parts that can be pulled off and sometimes eaten animals that move and can be dangerous. Like us, they live in a world full of regularity. You can think of them as our hominid ancestors, or if you prefer, as a race of aliens on another planet for our purposes, it doesn't really matter since we will only be using them to help us understand what language does. Lines Between Categories may not be Easy to Define.
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