Protolanguage Might Have Evolved Before Ostensive Communication

Planer, Ronald J.

doi:10.1007/s13752-017-0262-x

Cited by 20 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…Gradualists often hunt for precursor systems to language—sometimes called “protolanguages”—communication traditions that have some, but not all, of the distinctive features of modern and ethnographically known languages. Here we focus on Ronald Planer's (, ) account, which links language to Acheulean lithics.…”

Section: Lithics Mind and Languagementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Planer's cognitive package includes (a) the cognitive competences of extant primates; plus (b) informational theory of mind, the "ability to mentally represent other agents as possessing certain information-carrying states as well as states that specify an environmental condition that the agent is motivated to bring about" (p. 212); (c) mental-model construction, the ability to construct mental representations/templates of situations; and (d) imitation of interpersonal acts, the ability to mimic the actions of other individuals. (For why he think this cognitive package suffices for protolanguage see Planer, 2017a. ) To illustrate Planer's reasoning, we will focus on informational theory of mind, which Planer (2017b) links to instructed learning.…”

Section: Lithics Mind and Languagementioning

confidence: 99%

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From things to thinking: Cognitive archaeology

Currie

Killin

2019

Mind & Language

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Cognitive archaeologists infer from material remains to the cognitive features of past societies. We characterize cognitive archaeology in terms of trace‐based reasoning, which in the case of cognitive archaeology involves inferences drawing upon background theory linking objects from the archaeological record to cognitive (including psychological, symbolic, and ideological) features. We analyse such practices, examining work on cognitive evolution, language, and musicality. We argue that the central epistemic challenge for cognitive archaeology is often not a paucity of material remains, but insufficient constraint from cognitive theories. However, we also argue that the success of cognitive archaeology does not necessarily require well‐developed cognitive theories: Success might instead lead to them.

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Section: Lithics Mind and Languagementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Lithics Mind and Languagementioning

confidence: 99%

From things to thinking: Cognitive archaeology

Currie

Killin

2019

Mind & Language

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“…A challenge for Gricean accounts of communication—and the reason that many authors have argued only humans could attribute communicative intent—is that the introduction of the second clause seems to implicate cognitive skills that not all agents possess. On influential elaborations of Grice's view (e.g., Dennett, ; Planer, ; Scott‐Phillips, ; Sperber, ; Sterelny, ; Thompson, ; see also Gómez, , and Moore, , for discussion), understanding Gricean intentions requires at least that speaker and hearer possess the conceptual apparatus for thinking about one another's mental states and are able to entertain high (typically fourth‐order) level metarepresentations of each other's thoughts. Grasping intentions that satisfy clauses (1) and (2) of Grice's analysis seems to require entertaining thoughts like (i) S intends that (ii) I believe that (iii) S intends that (iv) I believe that p (a fourth‐order metarepresentation) or (i) S intends that (ii) I believe that (iii) S intends that I ψ (a third‐order metarepresentation).…”

Section: Social Cognition and Gricean Communicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Among philosophers, one strategy has been to accept that Gricean communication is cognitively difficult while emphasising the effectiveness and sophistication of various non‐Gricean forms of communication. In different ways, this view has been defended by Millikan (, see also ), Green (), Skyrms (), Bar‐On (), Planer (), Scarantino (), and Sterelny (), among others. I outline some recent accounts below.…”

Section: Alternatives To Grice?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Gricean communication, language development, and animal minds

Moore

2018

Philosophy Compass

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Humans alone acquire language. According to one influential school of thought, we do this because we possess a uniquely human ability to act with and attribute "Gricean" communicative intentions. A challenge for this view is that attributing communicative intent seems to require cognitive abilities that infant language learners lack. After considering a range of responses to this challenge, I argue that infant language development can be explained, because Gricean communication is cognitively less demanding than many suppose. However, a consequence of this is that abilities for Gricean communication are unlikely to be uniquely human.

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“…For arguments that pragmatic inference is possible with a substantially less rich cognitive package than these scholars maintain, see Planer (2017aPlaner ( , 2017b). e va n s e t a l .…”

Section: Multiple Perspective In G R Ammarmentioning

confidence: 99%

The grammar of engagement I: framework and initial exemplification

2017

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a b st r a c t Human language offers rich ways to track, compare, and engage the attentional and epistemic states of interlocutors. While this task is central to everyday communication, our knowledge of the cross-linguistic grammatical means that target such intersubjective coordination has remained basic. In two serialised papers, we introduce the term 'engagement' to refer to grammaticalised means for encoding the relative mental directedness of speaker and addressee towards an entity or state of affairs, and describe examples of engagement systems from around the world. Engagement systems express the speaker's assumptions about the degree to which their attention or knowledge is shared (or not shared) by the addressee. Engagement categories can operate at the level of entities in the here-and-now (deixis), in the unfolding discourse (definiteness vs indefiniteness), entire event-depicting propositions (through markers with clausal scope), and even metapropositions (potentially scoping over evidential values). In this first paper, we introduce engagement and situate it with respect to existing work on intersubjectivity in language. We then explore the key role of deixis in coordinating attention and expressing t h e g r a m m a r o f e n g a g e m e n t i 111 engagement, moving through increasingly intercognitive deictic systems from those that focus on the the location of the speaker, to those that encode the attentional state of the addressee.k e y w o r d s : engagement, attention, intersubjectivity, deixis, coordination.These two individuals, the producer and the recipient of language, or as we may more conveniently call them, the speaker and the hearer, and their relations to one another, should never be lost sight of if we want to understand the nature of language and of that part of language which is dealt with in grammar.

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Protolanguage Might Have Evolved Before Ostensive Communication

Cited by 20 publications

References 28 publications

From things to thinking: Cognitive archaeology

From things to thinking: Cognitive archaeology

Gricean communication, language development, and animal minds

The grammar of engagement I: framework and initial exemplification

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