Nonhuman Primate Communication, Pragmatics, and the Origins of Language

Abstract

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Exorcising Grice's ghost: an empirical approach to studying intentional communication in animals

“…One candidate for these abilities is the capacity to act with, and understand, communicative intentions. The philosopher of language, Paul Grice (, ), was pivotal in highlighting the importance of such a psychological framework for communication and many authors working in the ‘Gricean’ tradition have followed him in arguing that the ability for intentional communication requires a sophisticated, pre‐existing, metapsychological framework in which speaker and hearer (or signaller and receiver) mutually understand one another's intentions and beliefs (Sperber & Wilson, ; Sperber, ; Tomasello, ; Scott‐Phillips, ).…”

“…In linguistic pragmatics this communication of intention (surmised by these three clauses) is often referred to as ostensive or Gricean communication and the reiterated mutual perspective‐taking that underlies this process has consequently been highlighted as a defining feature of human linguistic communication (e.g. Grice, ; Dennett, ; Sperber & Wilson, ; Sperber, ; Tomasello, ; Scott‐Phillips, ).…”

“…Given the proposed centrality of Gricean characterisations of communication (Grice, ) to human communicative interaction, questions have been raised as to the uniqueness of these aspects of human language. The extent to which human and non‐human animal communication could involve the same underlying psychological framework has been debated (Gómez, ; Tomasello, ; Moore, ; Scott‐Phillips, ). One reason for this is that on standard accounts (Dennett, ; Sperber, ), Gricean communication requires that communicators are capable of entertaining very complex metarepresentations – that is, representations of others' mental states.…”

“…Second‐order intentionality involves complementing the intention to signal with the attribution of mental states (by the recipient to the signaller); whilst third‐order intentionality requires that the signaller intends for the recipient to attribute to her the intention to signal. Finally, fourth‐order intentionality requires that signaller and recipient, alike, represent both the signaller's goal and her intention that the recipient recognise that goal (Dennett, ; Sperber & Wilson, ; Scott‐Phillips, ).…”

“…However, second‐order intentionality (and beyond) likely employs cognitive mechanisms of a qualitatively different kind – since it requires that both signaller and recipient engage in some form of mental‐state attribution. For this reason, second‐order intentionality has received most interest because it has been generally considered as more ‘human’ or, as Grice highlighted, as more indicative of ‘true’ linguistic communication (Grice, ) and hence a step further along the continuum towards human language (Scott‐Phillips, ). One major consequence is that it has since become commonplace to assume that in order to demonstrate convincing evidence that animal vocal production is intentional and thus relevant to human language, at the very least, an attribution of mental states during vocal communication is required.…”