Evidence and interpretation in great ape gestural communication.
Humana Mente 6 (24):27-51 (2013)
Abstract
Tomasello and colleagues have offered various arguments to explain why
apes find the comprehension of pointing difficult. They have argued that:
(i) apes fail to understand communicative intentions; (ii) they fail to
understand informative, cooperative communication, and (iii) they fail to
track the common ground that pointing comprehension requires. In the
course of a review of the literature on apes' production and comprehension of pointing, I reject (i) and (ii), and offer a qualified defence of (iii). Drawing on work on expressive communication, I sketch an account of a mechanism by which ape gestural communication may proceed: the showing of expressive and naturally meaningful embodied behaviours. Such gestures are easily interpretable because they present rich evidence for a speaker's message. By contrast, pointing typically provides poor evidence for a speaker’s message, which must therefore be inferred from considerations in the interlocutors' common ground. This makes pointing comprehension comparatively difficult.
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2013-07-28
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696 ( #6,308 of 55,918 )
Recent downloads (6 months)
68 ( #10,200 of 55,918 )
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