Hostname: page-component-6898cfcb55-zkb6p Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-11T11:16:39.052Z 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, 72074 Tübingen, Germany http://www.uni-tuebingen.de/medizinischepsychologie/stuff/
*
boris.kotchoubey@uni-tuebingen.de
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the 'Save PDF' action button.

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.

Information

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

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.