Yes, I was going to say, we use language to individuate organisms, and then give an umwelt to each of them, so it would seem that language predates umweltification :P
My "theory of use" is much more inclusive and rational and scientific, I think: There are objective stuff out there. We view only those parts of the stuff that are important to us. So for example I'll view a woman as a sexual object, the lion will view her as a meal, and if we view the object (woman) in only those ways, then it's impossible for me to communicate with the lion, even though we are referring to the same object. And then some philosophers will start talking about how everything is therefore subjective and there's no real objects out there except for what we see, which disappears as soon as we stop looking. To me, it doesn't matter whether we exist or not: the real objective object is the collection of all its possible uses (meal, partner, mother, daughter, and things we never thought about). An object is the totality of possible uses. The more uses we figure out, the closer we are to seeing the object as it really is. Sans those uses, there is no object: anything that exists must be able to be used in some way. Btw, if the lion can, maybe in its hornier moments, see the woman as a sex object, and if I, in my hungrier moments, can see her as a meal, then the lion and I have understood each other.
Anyway, just wanted to give my theory of use in a nutshell! There's plenty more to it. The initial inspiration was the pragmatist maxim (which I consider pure genius), but I've deviated from that substantially since.