Year: 2013
Type: article
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.
Source: MPG.PuRe (Max Planck Society)
Author: Richard Moore
Institution: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Language: English
Topic: Primate Behavior and Ecology
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2147318831