Author:

Keywords:

Evolutionary anthropology, indicative pointing, non-verbal communication, Tomasello

Abstract:

In many of his works, Michael Tomasello consistently stresses the outstanding significance of non-verbal, deictic communication for the process of human cognitive development, for language acquisition and for the emergence of uniquely human forms of communication and cooperation. However, some critics deny this special significance of deictic communication, either because they assume that linguistic and non-linguistic communication have nothing in common or simply because they reject any principal difference between human and non-human primate cognition. In this text, I defend Tomasello against his pragmatist and reductivist critics, focusing on indicative pointing. At the same time, I suggest an alternative to his neo-Vygotskian interpretation of the empirical findings.