Gricean communication, language development, and animal minds

Richard Moore*

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    33 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Humans alone acquire language. According to one influential school of thought, we do this because we possess a uniquely human ability to act with and attribute “Gricean” communicative intentions. A challenge for this view is that attributing communicative intent seems to require cognitive abilities that infant language learners lack. After considering a range of responses to this challenge, I argue that infant language development can be explained, because Gricean communication is cognitively less demanding than many suppose. However, a consequence of this is that abilities for Gricean communication are unlikely to be uniquely human.

    Original languageEnglish
    Article numbere12550
    JournalPhilosophy Compass
    Volume13
    Issue number12
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Dec 2018

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