Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T01:44:59.411Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Pragmatics, prosody, and evolution: Language is more than a symbolic system

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 August 2005

Boris Kotchoubey
Boris Kotchoubey*
Affiliation:
Institute of Medical Psychology and Behavioral Neurobiology, University of Tübingen, 72074Tübingen, Germanyhttp://www.uni-tuebingen.de/medizinischepsychologie/stuff/
*
boris.kotchoubey@uni-tuebingen.de
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

The model presented in the target article is biased towards a cognitive-symbolic understanding of language, thus ignoring its other important aspects. Possible relationships of this cognitive-symbolic subsystem to pragmatics and prosody of language are discussed in the first part of the commentary. In the second part, the issue of a purely social versus biological mechanisms for transition from protolanguage to properly language is considered.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 28 , Issue 2 , April 2005 , pp. 136 - 137
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2005

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Note

1. From the pragmatic point of view, a message always remains “here and now.” For instance, I am going to discuss the transition from protolanguage to language, which was about 100,000 years ago, that is, fairly “beyond the here-and-now”; but my aim is to convince Arbib or other readers today.