Full Description
This volume explores the new interdisciplinary field of evolutionary pragmatics, which encompasses research on both the evolution of abilities needed for pragmatics and the role of pragmatics in the evolution of language. The biological evolution of linguistic capacities and the cultural evolution of natural languages were both driven by the communicative interactions of our ancestors; since these communicative interactions are the province of pragmatics, evolutionary pragmatics is the cornerstone of the study of the evolution of language.
The chapters in this volume investigate a wide range of pragmatic topics from an evolutionary perspective, including reference, ambiguity, common ground, communicative intentions, and language conventions. The authors also examine a number of topics relating specifically to evolutionary pragmatics, ranging from baboon vocalizations and gestural communication in chimpanzees to formal models of the evolution of signalling systems and the co-evolution of pragmatics and grammar. The range of approaches adopted reflects the interdisciplinary nature of the field, with insights from linguistics, philosophy, psychology, and primatology.
Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
List of Contributors
Introduction
1: Richard Moore: Intentions in human and non-human great ape communication
2: Suzanne Aussems;Richard Moore: Signal use and pragmatics in the first natural language users: Kinds of signs
3: Dorit Bar-On: Pragmatically intermediate protolanguage
4: Daniel W. Harris: Gricean communication, natural language, and human evolution
5: Josh Armstrong: The evolutionary foundations of common ground
6: Kirsty E. Graham;Catherine Hobaiter: Pragmatics in ape gesture
7: Paula Rubio-Fernández: Cultural evolutionary pragmatics: An empirical approach to the relation between language and social cognition
8: Bob van Tiel;Bart Geurts: Conventions, coordination, and arbitrariness
9: Roland Mühlenbernd;Andreas Baumann: Population-level models of evolutionary pragmatics
10: Bart Geurts: Normative pragmatics and social structures: an evolutionary perspective
11: Eva Wittenberg;Ray Jackendoff: The co-evolution of pragmatics and grammatical complexity
References
Index