Wednesday, October 26, 2016

A Natural History of Human Thinking #2

“Great apes do not create new communicative functions by combining their gestures, their vocalizations, or their gestures and vocalizations together [ ]. But humans do, including young children from the earliest stages of their communicative development, and including even children exposed to no conventional language, vocal or signed, at all [ ]” (p. 66).

“With gesture combinations we now also have the possibility of beginning down the path to the subject-predicate organization characteristic of full propositions” (p. 67).

“The overall picture is thus that early humans used their pointing and iconic gestures, both singly and in combination, to communicate much more richly and powerfully than did their primate cousins.” He says none of this required language; such communication is the prerequisite of becoming a language user (p. 68).

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