Module 6
Kennisclip Taal
Wat onderscheidt ons nou van andere diersoorten? Als je ons brein zou willen verkopen, wat
zijn dan onze unique selling points t.o.v. andere mensapen? (Tomasello en Herrmann
focussen op de onderste drie).
- Ons brein kan in principe heel goed reflecteren en impulsen onderdrukken (systeem
2)
- Ons brein kan heel goed communiceren, en heeft daarvoor twee geweldige systemen
ter beschikking
- Ons brein kan en wil heel goed samenwerken met anderen
- Ons brein heeft een sterke neiging tot cultureel leren en doceren.
We delen met andere diersoorten:
- Brein kan handig spieren aansturen, zodat beweging mogelijk is
- Brein brengt via beeld en geluid de omgeving in kaart, zodat je weet waar je heen
kan
- Brein heeft emoties en voorkeuren, zodat je ook echt ergens heen wilt
- Brein kan leren van ervaring, zodat je het de volgende keer beter doet
Twee geweldige communicatiesystemen, één daarvan is het taalsysteem.
- Taal staat ons toe om heel veel dingen heel precies te zeggen, waardoor we heel
veel beter kunnen samenwerken.
- Daaraan ten grondslag ligt de generativiteit van taal: op basis van een beperkte set
grammaticale regels en set woorden kan je een oneindig aantal zinnen construeren.
Hoe begrijpen we dat?
Incrementeel zinsbegrip: een luisteraar of lezer interpreteert een zin stap voor
stap en bouwt betekenis op terwijl de woorden één voor één binnenkomen, in
plaats van te wachten tot de hele zin compleet is. Dit doe je onder andere aan de
hand van bepaalde structuren:
- Syntactische structuur: de manier waarop woorden in een zin volgens
grammaticale regels zijn geordend en verbonden om samen een betekenisvolle
zin te vormen.
- Prosodische structuur: de manier waarop een zin wordt ingedeeld op basis van
ritme, klemtoon, intonatie en pauzes, waardoor duidelijk wordt hoe delen van de
zin samen horen en welke betekenis of nadruk ze krijgen.
- Semantische structuur: de kale, tijdloze, contextvrije betekenis van een zin.
Je hebt in je mentale lexicon informatie per woord over de woordvorm,
woordsyntaxis en woordbetekenis.
Met EEG (en ander) onderzoek kan je eenvoudig laten zien dat mensen een zin inderdaad
incrementeel verwerken en dat ze elk binnenkomend woordje ook meteen aan de ruimere
context (the common ground) verbinden.
,Ape and Human Cognition: What’s the Difference? – Tomasello and Herrmann
Humans perform many cognitive activities that other primates do not, yet there is also great
variation between different human cultures. All cultures have complex technologies, symbols,
and social institutions, but these differ widely in form. This suggests that human cognition is
closely connected to and shaped by human culture.
Research shows that great apes understand the physical world in much the same way
humans do. They recognize permanent objects, categories, quantities, and causal
relationships between events. These cognitive abilities likely evolved to help them forage for
food. Studies also indicate that great apes understand their social world similarly to humans.
They recognize individual group members, form social relationships such as dominance and
friendship, and understand relationships between others. They can also grasp the goals and
perceptions of others, viewing them as intentional agents.
Great apes think about the world in ways similar to humans: they can remember the past,
imagine the future, make inferences, and reason about others’ decisions.
Although humans have much larger brains, they are not simply more advanced in all areas of
cognition. Research shows that two-year-old children perform similarly to great apes in
understanding space, quantity, and causality. However, these young children display much
more advanced social-cognitive skills, especially in understanding others’ intentions, learning
socially, and communicating. This suggests that humans have evolved a unique form of
cultural intelligence that supports participation in cooperative cultural groups.
The key evolutionary difference between humans and other primates is that humans have
developed social-cognitive skills not only for competition, but especially for complex
cooperation—known as shared intentionality. This includes the ability and motivation to
collaborate, communicate, and pass on culture. Most important are skills and motivations for
shared intentionality in children’s (a) collaboration and communication and (b) cultural
learning and transmission. Humans communicate not only to influence others, but also to
share information, emotions, and attention in a helpful way. Even infants show this
cooperative communication before they learn language, for example through pointing.
Human language builds on these cooperative motives and relies on shared symbols whose
meanings depend on mutual agreement. Collaboration and communication are based on
joint attention, where individuals are mutually aware that they share a goal or focus on the
same object. This shared understanding allows humans to create cultural institutions—such
as marriage, money, and political roles—that exist because people collectively believe in and
act according to them.
While great apes can transmit some behaviors culturally, humans rely entirely on cultural
learning and transmission. Human culture evolves cumulatively: material objects, symbols,
and social practices build on previous generations, becoming increasingly complex
(“ratcheting up”). Adults intentionally teach children—a form of altruistic cooperation—so they
learn not just useful ways of doing things, but the socially “right” ways, giving human learning
a moral dimension.
The main distinction of human cognition is its adaptation to function within cultural groups.
Humans cooperate to create artifacts and practices that accumulate improvements over time,
generating new cognitive environments. Children develop species-specific skills for
collaboration, communication, and cultural learning to participate in this process. Humans are
therefore exceptional at niche construction and gene–culture coevolution, evolving cognitive
skills and motivations to thrive in diverse, self-created cultural worlds.
,Human Cooperative Communication – Tomasello
‘Nothing great apes do is of much importance to human communication, because our
language is unique.’ If our question is about origins, this way of thinking has two fundamental
problems:
1. Although conventional languages are in some sense different codes, linguistic
communication relies to a much greater degree than is readily apparent on uncoded
communication and other forms of mental attunement. Everyday linguistic
communication is full of expressions (she, they, here) whose referents cannot be
determined directly from any code. And it is full of communicative exchanges which
rely on background knowledge and inferences from facts outside of any code.
The linguistic ‘code’ rests on a nonlinguistic infrastructure of intentional
understanding and common conceptual ground, which is in fact logically primary.
2. The basic point is that human communication could not have originated with a code,
since this would assume what it attempts to explain. Thus, establishing an explicit
code requires some preexisting form of communication that is at least as rich as that
code.
A symbolic communicative code assumes some preexisting form of communication
that is being codified. Explicit codes are thus by their very nature derivative.
One of the central insights of Wittgenstein’s trenchant analysis of linguistic communication is
that new potential users of a language can break into the code only if they have some other
means of communication with, or at least communing with, mature users.
If we want to understand human communication, therefore, we cannot begin with language.
Rather, we must begin with unconventionalized, uncoded communication, and other forms of
mental attunement, as foundational. These can include humans’ natural gestures such as
pointing and pantomiming. These gestures are natural but species-unique.
Our focus is on the mostly hidden, highly complex, species-unique, psychological
infrastructure of shared intentionality within which humans use their natural gestures.
Specifying the components of this infrastructure systematically (cognitive skills and social
motivations involved) amounts to constructing a model of human communication:
cooperation model.
3.1 Pointing and Pantomiming
Our interest here is gestures used as complete communicative acts in themselves, because
it is here that we may see most clearly all the different components of human cooperative
communication working together.
Humans gesture to:
- direct the attention of a recipient spatially to something in the immediate perceptual
environment (deictically).
These are similar to ape attentiongetters in that they are both aimed at directing
the attention of a recipient to something in the immediate perceptual environment.
However, where ape attention-getters rest on the natural tendency of recipients to
attend to the source of noises or touches, human pointing rests on the natural
tendency of recipients to follow the gaze/pointing direction to external targets.
- direct the imagination of a recipient to something that, typically, is not in the
immediate perceptual environment by behaviorally simulating an action, relation or
object (iconically).
These are similar to great ape intention-movements in that they are both actions
, but not real actions: intention-movements are abbreviated from the real thing and
depict the real thing symbolically.
However, whereas ape intention-movements rest on the natural tendency of
recipients to anticipate the next step in an action sequence, human iconic gestures
rest on the natural tendency of recipients to understand intentional actions.
By drawing the recipient’s attention or imagination to something, these referential acts are
intended to induce her to infer the communicator’s social intention.
Arguably the most fundamental type of human gesture used as a complete communicative
act is what we call attention-directing or deictic gestures, the prototype of which is human
pointing. There are different variations but the basic interpersonal function of attention-
directing is present in all known human societies. They work by directing the attention of the
recipient spatially to some location in the immediate perceptual environment (including
holding up objects to show). Extra cognitive work must then be done for the social intention
to be inferred. Pointing occurs mostly when language is not practical or appropriate.
Example: point to empty glass in bar. ‘Attend to the emptiness, please fill up.’
Key point: there is a split between the referential and the social intention, as the
communicator attempts to direct the recipient’s attention to something for some reason, and
the recipient attempts to follow and to infer this reason.This knowledge must be shared
common ground.
3.1.2 Iconic gestures (pantomiming)
The second type of human gesture used as a complete communicative act is iconic gestures
or pantomimes (depictive, imagistic, characterizing, representational, symbolic). These are
presumably culturally universal as well. In using an iconic gesture the communicator enacts
some action with her hands and/or body (or perhaps depicts a referent statically), and this is
intended to induce the recipient to imagine some corresponding perceptually absent referent
(or some perceptually absent aspect of a present referential situation). Again extra cognitive
work must be done after the referent is identified for the social intention to be inferred.
Because iconic gestures are typically simulations of actions that are not currently happening,
they depend, in a way that pointing does not, on skills involving some kind of
imitation/simualtion/symbolizing.
The most common uses of iconic gestures are:
1. to indicate that this is the action I want you to perform, that I intend to perform myself
or that I want to tell you about, and
2. to request or otherwise indicate an object that ‘does this’ or an object that ‘one does
this with.’
It is important to note that the comprehension of iconic gestures depends fundamentally on
an understanding of the intention to communicate behind the gesture: without a recognition
of my intention to communicate the proprietor will see the gesture as some kind of strangely
misplaced instrumental action, rather than an action designed to inform him.
It seems plausible that people point to perceptually present things as their first option, when
that is feasible and likely to suffice communicatively, and that only when, for whatever
reason, pointing is impractical do people use iconic gestures. Pointing and iconic gestures do
not rely on language.
Kennisclip Taal
Wat onderscheidt ons nou van andere diersoorten? Als je ons brein zou willen verkopen, wat
zijn dan onze unique selling points t.o.v. andere mensapen? (Tomasello en Herrmann
focussen op de onderste drie).
- Ons brein kan in principe heel goed reflecteren en impulsen onderdrukken (systeem
2)
- Ons brein kan heel goed communiceren, en heeft daarvoor twee geweldige systemen
ter beschikking
- Ons brein kan en wil heel goed samenwerken met anderen
- Ons brein heeft een sterke neiging tot cultureel leren en doceren.
We delen met andere diersoorten:
- Brein kan handig spieren aansturen, zodat beweging mogelijk is
- Brein brengt via beeld en geluid de omgeving in kaart, zodat je weet waar je heen
kan
- Brein heeft emoties en voorkeuren, zodat je ook echt ergens heen wilt
- Brein kan leren van ervaring, zodat je het de volgende keer beter doet
Twee geweldige communicatiesystemen, één daarvan is het taalsysteem.
- Taal staat ons toe om heel veel dingen heel precies te zeggen, waardoor we heel
veel beter kunnen samenwerken.
- Daaraan ten grondslag ligt de generativiteit van taal: op basis van een beperkte set
grammaticale regels en set woorden kan je een oneindig aantal zinnen construeren.
Hoe begrijpen we dat?
Incrementeel zinsbegrip: een luisteraar of lezer interpreteert een zin stap voor
stap en bouwt betekenis op terwijl de woorden één voor één binnenkomen, in
plaats van te wachten tot de hele zin compleet is. Dit doe je onder andere aan de
hand van bepaalde structuren:
- Syntactische structuur: de manier waarop woorden in een zin volgens
grammaticale regels zijn geordend en verbonden om samen een betekenisvolle
zin te vormen.
- Prosodische structuur: de manier waarop een zin wordt ingedeeld op basis van
ritme, klemtoon, intonatie en pauzes, waardoor duidelijk wordt hoe delen van de
zin samen horen en welke betekenis of nadruk ze krijgen.
- Semantische structuur: de kale, tijdloze, contextvrije betekenis van een zin.
Je hebt in je mentale lexicon informatie per woord over de woordvorm,
woordsyntaxis en woordbetekenis.
Met EEG (en ander) onderzoek kan je eenvoudig laten zien dat mensen een zin inderdaad
incrementeel verwerken en dat ze elk binnenkomend woordje ook meteen aan de ruimere
context (the common ground) verbinden.
,Ape and Human Cognition: What’s the Difference? – Tomasello and Herrmann
Humans perform many cognitive activities that other primates do not, yet there is also great
variation between different human cultures. All cultures have complex technologies, symbols,
and social institutions, but these differ widely in form. This suggests that human cognition is
closely connected to and shaped by human culture.
Research shows that great apes understand the physical world in much the same way
humans do. They recognize permanent objects, categories, quantities, and causal
relationships between events. These cognitive abilities likely evolved to help them forage for
food. Studies also indicate that great apes understand their social world similarly to humans.
They recognize individual group members, form social relationships such as dominance and
friendship, and understand relationships between others. They can also grasp the goals and
perceptions of others, viewing them as intentional agents.
Great apes think about the world in ways similar to humans: they can remember the past,
imagine the future, make inferences, and reason about others’ decisions.
Although humans have much larger brains, they are not simply more advanced in all areas of
cognition. Research shows that two-year-old children perform similarly to great apes in
understanding space, quantity, and causality. However, these young children display much
more advanced social-cognitive skills, especially in understanding others’ intentions, learning
socially, and communicating. This suggests that humans have evolved a unique form of
cultural intelligence that supports participation in cooperative cultural groups.
The key evolutionary difference between humans and other primates is that humans have
developed social-cognitive skills not only for competition, but especially for complex
cooperation—known as shared intentionality. This includes the ability and motivation to
collaborate, communicate, and pass on culture. Most important are skills and motivations for
shared intentionality in children’s (a) collaboration and communication and (b) cultural
learning and transmission. Humans communicate not only to influence others, but also to
share information, emotions, and attention in a helpful way. Even infants show this
cooperative communication before they learn language, for example through pointing.
Human language builds on these cooperative motives and relies on shared symbols whose
meanings depend on mutual agreement. Collaboration and communication are based on
joint attention, where individuals are mutually aware that they share a goal or focus on the
same object. This shared understanding allows humans to create cultural institutions—such
as marriage, money, and political roles—that exist because people collectively believe in and
act according to them.
While great apes can transmit some behaviors culturally, humans rely entirely on cultural
learning and transmission. Human culture evolves cumulatively: material objects, symbols,
and social practices build on previous generations, becoming increasingly complex
(“ratcheting up”). Adults intentionally teach children—a form of altruistic cooperation—so they
learn not just useful ways of doing things, but the socially “right” ways, giving human learning
a moral dimension.
The main distinction of human cognition is its adaptation to function within cultural groups.
Humans cooperate to create artifacts and practices that accumulate improvements over time,
generating new cognitive environments. Children develop species-specific skills for
collaboration, communication, and cultural learning to participate in this process. Humans are
therefore exceptional at niche construction and gene–culture coevolution, evolving cognitive
skills and motivations to thrive in diverse, self-created cultural worlds.
,Human Cooperative Communication – Tomasello
‘Nothing great apes do is of much importance to human communication, because our
language is unique.’ If our question is about origins, this way of thinking has two fundamental
problems:
1. Although conventional languages are in some sense different codes, linguistic
communication relies to a much greater degree than is readily apparent on uncoded
communication and other forms of mental attunement. Everyday linguistic
communication is full of expressions (she, they, here) whose referents cannot be
determined directly from any code. And it is full of communicative exchanges which
rely on background knowledge and inferences from facts outside of any code.
The linguistic ‘code’ rests on a nonlinguistic infrastructure of intentional
understanding and common conceptual ground, which is in fact logically primary.
2. The basic point is that human communication could not have originated with a code,
since this would assume what it attempts to explain. Thus, establishing an explicit
code requires some preexisting form of communication that is at least as rich as that
code.
A symbolic communicative code assumes some preexisting form of communication
that is being codified. Explicit codes are thus by their very nature derivative.
One of the central insights of Wittgenstein’s trenchant analysis of linguistic communication is
that new potential users of a language can break into the code only if they have some other
means of communication with, or at least communing with, mature users.
If we want to understand human communication, therefore, we cannot begin with language.
Rather, we must begin with unconventionalized, uncoded communication, and other forms of
mental attunement, as foundational. These can include humans’ natural gestures such as
pointing and pantomiming. These gestures are natural but species-unique.
Our focus is on the mostly hidden, highly complex, species-unique, psychological
infrastructure of shared intentionality within which humans use their natural gestures.
Specifying the components of this infrastructure systematically (cognitive skills and social
motivations involved) amounts to constructing a model of human communication:
cooperation model.
3.1 Pointing and Pantomiming
Our interest here is gestures used as complete communicative acts in themselves, because
it is here that we may see most clearly all the different components of human cooperative
communication working together.
Humans gesture to:
- direct the attention of a recipient spatially to something in the immediate perceptual
environment (deictically).
These are similar to ape attentiongetters in that they are both aimed at directing
the attention of a recipient to something in the immediate perceptual environment.
However, where ape attention-getters rest on the natural tendency of recipients to
attend to the source of noises or touches, human pointing rests on the natural
tendency of recipients to follow the gaze/pointing direction to external targets.
- direct the imagination of a recipient to something that, typically, is not in the
immediate perceptual environment by behaviorally simulating an action, relation or
object (iconically).
These are similar to great ape intention-movements in that they are both actions
, but not real actions: intention-movements are abbreviated from the real thing and
depict the real thing symbolically.
However, whereas ape intention-movements rest on the natural tendency of
recipients to anticipate the next step in an action sequence, human iconic gestures
rest on the natural tendency of recipients to understand intentional actions.
By drawing the recipient’s attention or imagination to something, these referential acts are
intended to induce her to infer the communicator’s social intention.
Arguably the most fundamental type of human gesture used as a complete communicative
act is what we call attention-directing or deictic gestures, the prototype of which is human
pointing. There are different variations but the basic interpersonal function of attention-
directing is present in all known human societies. They work by directing the attention of the
recipient spatially to some location in the immediate perceptual environment (including
holding up objects to show). Extra cognitive work must then be done for the social intention
to be inferred. Pointing occurs mostly when language is not practical or appropriate.
Example: point to empty glass in bar. ‘Attend to the emptiness, please fill up.’
Key point: there is a split between the referential and the social intention, as the
communicator attempts to direct the recipient’s attention to something for some reason, and
the recipient attempts to follow and to infer this reason.This knowledge must be shared
common ground.
3.1.2 Iconic gestures (pantomiming)
The second type of human gesture used as a complete communicative act is iconic gestures
or pantomimes (depictive, imagistic, characterizing, representational, symbolic). These are
presumably culturally universal as well. In using an iconic gesture the communicator enacts
some action with her hands and/or body (or perhaps depicts a referent statically), and this is
intended to induce the recipient to imagine some corresponding perceptually absent referent
(or some perceptually absent aspect of a present referential situation). Again extra cognitive
work must be done after the referent is identified for the social intention to be inferred.
Because iconic gestures are typically simulations of actions that are not currently happening,
they depend, in a way that pointing does not, on skills involving some kind of
imitation/simualtion/symbolizing.
The most common uses of iconic gestures are:
1. to indicate that this is the action I want you to perform, that I intend to perform myself
or that I want to tell you about, and
2. to request or otherwise indicate an object that ‘does this’ or an object that ‘one does
this with.’
It is important to note that the comprehension of iconic gestures depends fundamentally on
an understanding of the intention to communicate behind the gesture: without a recognition
of my intention to communicate the proprietor will see the gesture as some kind of strangely
misplaced instrumental action, rather than an action designed to inform him.
It seems plausible that people point to perceptually present things as their first option, when
that is feasible and likely to suffice communicatively, and that only when, for whatever
reason, pointing is impractical do people use iconic gestures. Pointing and iconic gestures do
not rely on language.
