@freemo The "meta level" is what i mean.
I can express that some detail of what you do might be relevant to my emotional response or i might say that an emotion is not because of what you did, just coincidence that you are here to see the emotion.
An animal could only express the emotion itself, not descriptions around (the meta part).
Language is a part of this, if other factors are relevant is kind of unclear - lacking animals with language to test that.