1、MICHAEL TOMASELLO 0 Origins of Human Communication TOMASELLO Origins of Human Communication cognitive science/linguistics “Underscoring the uniqueness of humans is all too easy. The challenge is to explain it in a naturalistic perspective. Michael Tomasello meets the challenge with his unique suite
2、of competencies in animal and human psychology, and his ability to think and write with clarity and insight about complex issues. There is much to learn and much to think and also to argue about in this important book.”Dan Sperber, Institut Jean Nicod Requesting help in the immediate you-and-me and
3、here- and-now, for example, required very little grammar, but informing and sharing required increasingly complex grammatical devices. Drawing on empirical research into gestural and vocal communication by great apes and human infants (much of it conducted by his own research team), Tomasello argues
4、 further that humans cooperative communication emerged first in the natural gestures of pointing and pantomiming. Conventional communication, first gestural and then vocal, evolved only after humans already possessed these natural gestures and their shared intentionality infrastructure along with sk
5、ills of cultural learning for creating and passing along jointly understood communicative conventions. Challenging the Chomskian view that linguistic knowledge is innate, Tomasello proposes instead that the most fundamental aspects of uniquely human communication are biological adaptations for coope
6、rative social interaction in general and that the purely linguistic dimensions of human communication are cultural conventions and constructions created by and passed along within particular cultural groups. Origins of Human Communication MICHAEL TOMASELLO Human communication is grounded in fundamen
7、tally cooperative, even shared, intentions. In this original and provocative account of the evolutionary origins of human communication, Michael Tomasello connects the fundamentally cooperative structure of human communication (initially discovered by Paul Grice) to the especially cooperative struct
8、ure of human (as opposed to other primate) social interaction. Tomasello argues that human cooperative communication rests on a psychological infrastructure of shared intentionality (joint attention, common ground), evolved originally for collaboration and culture more generally. The basic motives o
9、f the infrastructure are helping and sharing: humans communicate to request help, inform others of things helpfully, and share attitudes as a way of bonding within the cultural group. These cooperative motives each created different functional pressures for conventionalizing grammatical construction
10、s. (continued on back flap) The MIT Press Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142 http:/mitpress.mit.edu 978-0-262-20177-3 Michael Tomasello is Codirector of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig. He is the author of The Cultural Origins of Huma
11、n Cognition and Constructing a Language: A Usage-Based Theory of Language Acquisition.the jean nicod lectures a bradford book jacket design by molly seamansOrigins of Human CommunicationThe Jean Nicod Lectures Francois Recanati, editor Jerry A. Fodor (1994), The Elm and the Expert: Mentalese and Its
12、 Semantics Fred Dretske (1995), Naturalizing the Mind Jon Elster (1999), Strong Feelings: Emotion, Addiction, and Human Behavior John Perry (2001), Knowledge, Possibility, and Consciousness John R. Searle (2001), Rationality in Action Ruth Garrett Millikan (2004), Varieties of Meaning Daniel C. Denn
13、ett (2005), Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness Zenon W. Pylyshyn (2007), Things and Places: How the Mind Connects with the World Gilbert Harman and Sanjeev Kulkarni (2007), Reliable Reasoning: Induction and Statistical Learning Theory Michael Tomasello (2008), Origin
14、s of Human CommunicationOrigins of Human Communication Michael Tomasello A Bradford Book The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England 2008 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (in
15、cluding photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. MIT Press books may be purchased at special quantity discounts for business or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail special_salesmitpress.mit.edu or write to Spec
16、ial Sales Department, The MIT Press, 55 Hayward Street, Cambridge, MA 02142. This book was set in Palatino by SNP Best-set Typesetter Ltd., Hong Kong, and was printed and bound in the United States. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Tomasello, Michael. Origins of human communication
17、 / Michael Tomasello.p. cm.(Jean Nicod lectures) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-262-20177-3 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Language and languagesOrigin. 2. Animal communication. I. Title. P116.T66 2008 401dc22 2007049249 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1Point to a piece of paper. And now
18、point to its shapenow to its colornow to its number. . . . How did you do it? Wittgenstein, Philosophical InvestigationsContents Series Foreword ix Preface and Acknowledgments xi 1 A Focus on Infrastructure 1 2 Primate Intentional Communication 13 2.1 Vocal Displays 15 2.2 Gestural Signals 20 2.3 Co
19、mmunication with Humans 34 2.4 Intentionality in Ape Communication 43 2.5 Conclusion 53 3 Human Cooperative Communication 57 3.1 Pointing and Pantomiming 60 3.2 The Cooperation Model 72 3.3 Communicative Conventions 99 3.4 Conclusion 107 4 Ontogenetic Origins 109 4.1 Infant Pointing 111 4.2 Sources
20、of Infant Pointing 135 4.3 Early Pantomiming 1454.4 Shared Intentionality and Early Language 154 4.5 Conclusion 165 5 Phylogenetic Origins 169 5.1 The Emergence of Collaboration 172 5.2 The Emergence of Cooperative Communication 191 5.3 The Emergence of Conventional Communication 218 5.4 Conclusion
21、237 6 The Grammatical Dimension 243 6.1 The Grammar of Requesting 246 6.2 The Grammar of Informing 270 6.3 The Grammar of Sharing and Narrative 282 6.4 The Conventionalization of Linguistic Constructions 295 6.5 Conclusion 316 7 From Ape Gestures to Human Language 319 7.1 Summary of the Argument 320
22、 7.2 Hypotheses and Problems 327 7.3 Language as Shared Intentionality 342 References 347 Author Index 373 Subject Index 379 viii ContentsSeries Foreword The Jean Nicod Lectures are delivered annually in Paris by a leading philosopher of mind or philosophically oriented cognitive scientist. The 1993
23、 inaugural lectures marked the centenary of the birth of the French philoso- pher and logician Jean Nicod (18931931). The lectures are sponsored by the Centre National de la Recherche Scienti que (CNRS), in cooperation with the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) and the Ecole Norma
24、le Superieure (ENS). The series hosts the texts of the lectures or the monographs they inspire. Jean Nicod Committee Jacques Bouveresse, President Jrme Dokic and Elisabeth Pacherie, Secretary Franois Recanati, Editor of the Series Daniel Adler Jean-Pierre Changeux Stanislas Dehaene Emmanuel Dupoux J
25、ean-Gabriel Ganascia Pierre Jacob Philippe de Rouilhan Dan SperberPreface and Acknowledgments This volume is based on the Jean Nicod Lectures deliv- ered in Paris in the Spring of 2006. Given the people at the Jean Nicod institute, I chose to focus on communi- cation. I have done a fair amount of em
26、pirical and theo- retical work on: (i) great ape gestural communication; (ii) human infants gestural communication; and (iii) human childrens early language development. I have also worked a good bit on more general cognitive and social- cognitive processes involved in human communication and langua
27、ge: (i) social and cultural cognition; (ii) social and cultural learning; and (iii) cooperation and shared intentionality. My attempt in this volume is to bring all of this together into one coherent account of the evolution and development of human communication. The single animating idea of this a
28、ttempt is that there must be some fairly speci c connections between the fundamentally cooperative structure of human communication, as ini- tially discovered by Grice, and the especially cooperative structure of human, as opposed to other primate, social interaction and culture in general.xii Prefa
29、ce and Acknowledgments The ideas in this volume have come mainly from my cooperative research and discussions with my many col- leagues in the Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Much of what is presented here originated i
30、n these interactions, and I only wish I could recall all of the particular sources more clearly. But what is clear is the large debt I owe to several speci c people. Most important in the context of this volume is Malinda Carpenter. Malinda and I have discus- sions on almost a daily basis about topi
31、cs that relate to the current volume more or less directly. My thinking has been shaped by these discussions in such fundamental ways that, unfortunately, it is impossible to give speci c credit for speci c things (or to indicate all those points with which Malinda disagrees). Also of particular imp
32、or- tance were the many discussions I have had over the years with Josep Call about great ape gestural communi- cation, and with Elena Lieven about child language acquisition. I presented an early version of the ideas in this volume to the members of our social cognition research group (the infamous
33、 September Sessions), and received extremely helpful feedback from Hannes Rakoczy, Tanya Behne, Henrike Moll, Ulf Liszkowski, Felix Warneken, Emily Wyman, Suse Grassman, Kristin Liebal, Maria Grfenhein, Gerlin Hauser, and othersincluding the suggestion to leave out a number of diagrams even crazier
34、than those that are currently here. I also received a number Preface and Acknowledgments xiii of useful suggestions from the attendees at the Jean Nicod Lectures themselves, especially Dan Sperber. Several people read more or less the entire volume and helped me to improve it immensely: Malinda Carp
35、enter, Elena Lieven, Bill Croft, Adele Goldberg, and Gina Conti- Ramsdenalong with an anonymous reviewer for MIT Press. Others who read selected portions and gave valu- able feedback as well are: Hannes Rakoczy, Henrike Moll, Joe Henrich, Danielle Matthews, Nausicaa Pouscoulous, Felix Warneken, Coli
36、n Bannard, Emily Wyman, and Kristin Liebal. The thoughtful criticisms of these readers have made this a much more empirically accurate, theo- retically coherent, and user-friendly volume. I also thank Esteban Rivas for supplying me with helpful information for table 6.1. Finally, as always, is Henri
37、ette Zeidler, who not only helped with several speci c aspects of the book, but also ran things at the department with her usual skill and good cheer while I was home writing. I am also grateful to Annette Witzmann for help with the references, and to Tom Stone at MIT Press for his oversight of the
38、entire publication process.1 A Focus on Infrastructure What we call meaning must be connected with the primitive language of gestures. Wittgenstein, The Big Typescript Walk up to any animal in a zoo and try to communicate something simple. Tell a lion, or a tiger, or a bear to turn its body like “th
39、is,” showing it what to do by demonstrat- ing with your hand or body and offering a delicious treat in return. Or simply point to where you would like it to stand or to where some hidden food is located. Or inform it that a fearsome predator is lurking behind a bush by both pointing to the location
40、and pantomiming the pred- ators actions. They dont get it. And it is not just that they are not interested or motivated or intelligent in their own way, but the fact is that you simply cannot tell animals anything, even nonverbally, and expect them to understand. Human beings, of course, nd such ges
41、tures as point- ing and pantomiming totally natural and transparent: 2 Chapter 1 just look where I am pointing and you will see what I mean. Indeed, even prelinguistic infants use and under- stand the pointing gesture, and in many social situations in which vocal language is not possible or practica
42、lfor example, across a crowded room or in a noisy factory humans naturally communicate by pointing and panto- miming. Tourists manage to survive and interact effectively in many situations in foreign cultures, in which no one shares their conventional language, precisely by relying on such naturally
43、 meaningful forms of gestural communication. My central claim in these lectures is that to understand how humans communicate with one another using a language and how this competence might have arisen in evolution, we must rst understand how humans com- municate with one another using natural gestur
44、es. Indeed, my evolutionary hypothesis will be that the rst uniquely human forms of communication were pointing and pantomiming. The social-cognitive and social-motiva- tional infrastructure that enabled these new forms of communication then acted as a kind of psychological platform on which the var
45、ious systems of conventional linguistic communication (all 6,000 of them) could be built. Pointing and pantomiming were thus the critical transition points in the evolution of human communica- tion, already embodying most of the uniquely human forms of social cognition and motivation required for th
46、e later creation of conventional languages.A Focus on Infrastructure 3 The problem is that, compared with conventional human languages (including conventionalized sign lan- guages), natural gestures would seem to be very weak communicative devices, as they carry much less informa- tion “in” the comm
47、unicative signal itself. Consider point- ing, which I will argue later was the primordial form of uniquely human communication. Suppose that you and I are walking to the library, and out of the blue I point for you in the direction of some bicycles leaning against the library wall. Your reaction wil
48、l very likely be “Huh?,” as you have no idea which aspect of the situation I am indi- cating or why I am doing so, since, by itself, pointing means nothing. But if some days earlier you broke up with your boyfriend in a particularly nasty way, and we both know this mutually, and one of the bicycles
49、is his, which we also both know mutually, then the exact same pointing gesture in the exact same physical situation might mean something very complex like “Your boy- friends already at the library (so perhaps we should skip it).” On the other hand, if one of the bicycles is the one that we both know mutually was stolen from you recently, then the exact same pointing gesture will mean some- thing completely different. Or perhaps we have been wondering together if the library is open at this late hour, and I am indicating the presence of many bicycles outsid
