[kibwen]

Helen Keller was blind and deaf from infancy. What her teacher gave her was a way of systematizing what little sensory stimulation she was capable of receiving. "Language", in the topical sense of "the textual encoding of language that LLMs ingest and emit", is certainly not required for consciousness. Rather, what you need is a way to identify and predict patterns borne out of repeated observations, which is complicated by the lack of ability to observe.