Account

Company

  Menu
Large Image

Description

A leading expert on evolution and communication presents an empirically based theory of the evolutionary origins of human communication that challenges the dominant Chomskian view.
Human communication is grounded in fundamentally cooperative, even shared, intentions. In this original and provocative account of the evolutionary origins of human communication, Michael Tomasello connects the fundamentally cooperative structure of human communication (initially discovered by Paul Grice) to the especially cooperative structure of human (as opposed to other primate) social interaction. Tomasello argues that human cooperative communication rests on a psychological infrastructure of shared intentionality (joint attention, common ground), evolved originally for collaboration and culture more generally. The basic motives of the infrastructure are helping and sharing: humans communicate to request help, inform others of things helpfully, and share attitudes as a way of bonding within the cultural group. These cooperative motives each created different functional pressures for conventionalizing grammatical constructions. Requesting help in the immediate you-and-me and here-and-now, for example, required very little grammar, but informing and sharing required increasingly complex grammatical devices. Drawing on empirical research into gestural and vocal communication by great apes and human infants (much of it conducted by his own research team), Tomasello argues further that humans' cooperative communication emerged first in the natural gestures of pointing and pantomiming. Conventional communication, first gestural and then vocal, evolved only after humans already possessed these natural gestures and their shared intentionality infrastructure along with skills of cultural learning for creating and passing along jointly understood communicative conventions. Challenging the Chomskian view that linguistic knowledge is innate, Tomasello proposes instead that the most fundamental aspects of uniquely human communication are biological adaptations for cooperative social interaction in general and that the purely linguistic dimensions of human communication are cultural conventions and constructions created by and passed along within particular cultural groups.

Tag This Book

This Book Has Been Tagged
It hasn't. Be the first to tag this book!

Our Recommendation

Track It. This book has been $18.99 within the past year.

Notify Me When The Price...

  • $
  • If I'm already tracking this book...

to track this book on eReaderIQ.

Track These Authors

to track Michael Tomasello on eReaderIQ.

  • to be notified each time the price drops on any book by Michael Tomasello.
  • to stop tracking Michael Tomasello.

Price Summary

  • We started tracking this book on October 9, 2020.
  • This book was $18.99 when we started tracking it.
  • The price of this book has changed 2 times in the past 1,266 days.
  • The current price of this book is $28.99 last checked one day ago.
  • This lowest price this book has been offered at in the past year is $18.99.
  • The lowest price to date was $18.99 last reached on October 9, 2020.
  • This book has been $18.99 one time since we started tracking it.
  • The highest price to date was $28.99 last reached on February 17, 2024.
  • This book has been $28.99 one time since we started tracking it.
  • This book is currently at its highest price since we started tracking it.

Genres

Additional Info

  • Text-to-Speech: Disabled
  • Lending: Disabled
  • Print Length: 408 Pages
  • File Size: 1,141 KB

We last verified the price of this book about one day ago. At that time, the price was $28.99. This price is subject to change. The price displayed on the Amazon.com website at the time of purchase is the price you will pay for this book. Please confirm the price before making any purchases.