I don’t buy this. My child communicates with me using emotion and other cues because she can’t speak yet. I don’t know much about early humans or other sapiens but I imagine they communicated long before complex language evolved. These other means of communication are not second order, they are first order.
Emotions exist. You feel them. I feel them. Most people feel them unless they've suppressed them sooo far into their subconscious that they don't have a conscious recognition of it.
We can know how someone else is feeling by reading their body language and tying that to our personal experience of how we express those feelings. No linguistics necessary.
Language is just an easier, more clear way of communicating these fundamental facets of human existence
