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鈥楶ragmatics-First鈥� Approaches to Animal Communication and the Evolution of Language

Dorit Bar-On, University of Connecticut;

Director, Expression, Communication, and Origins of MeaningResearch Group (ECOM)

Recent discussions of animal communication and the evolution of language have advocated a 鈥�pragmatics-first鈥� approach to the subject. Seyfarth & Cheney (2017), for example, propose that 鈥渁nimal communication constitutes a rich pragmatic system鈥� and that 鈥渢he ubiquity of pragmatics, 鈥� suggest[s] that, as language evolved, semantics and syntax were built upon a foundation of sophisticated pragmatic inference鈥�. I begin by distinguishing two different notions of pragmatics advocates of the 鈥榩ragmatics-first鈥� approach have implicitly relied on (cf. Bar-On and Moore, 2018). On the first, Carnapian notion, pragmatic phenomena are those that involve context-dependent determination of the content or significance of an utterance or signal. On the second, Gricean notion, pragmatic phenomena involve reliance on speakers鈥� communicative intentions and their decipherment by their hearers. I use the distinction, first, to evaluate a recent formal linguistic analysis of monkey calls, due to Schlenker et al. (e.g. 2014, 2016a,b), which explains the derivation of call meanings through a form of pragmatic enrichment. And, second, I use the distinction to motivate the need for an 鈥榠ntermediary pragmatics鈥� that, I argue, applies only to a subset of animal communicative behaviors, and would allow us to reconceive the significance of animal communication for our understanding of the evolution of language.

Please contact Richard Moore for further information.