Draft – please do not cite without permission. Pragmatic Interpretation and Signaler-Receiver Asymmetries in Animal Communication 1 Dorit Bar-On and Richard Moore 2 For the Andrews & Beck (eds.) Routledge Handbook for the Philosophy of Animal Minds. 3 (5,340 words) 4 5 Abstract: Researchers have converged on the idea that a pragmatic understanding of 6 communication can shed important light on the evolution of language. Accordingly, 7 animal communication scientists have been keen to adopt insights from pragmatics 8 research. Some authors couple their appeal to pragmatic aspects of communication with 9 the claim that there are fundamental asymmetries between signalers and receivers in non-10 human animals. For example, in the case of primate vocal calls, signalers are said to 11 produce signals unintentionally and mindlessly, whereas receivers are thought to engage 12 in contextual interpretation to derive the significance of signals. We argue that claims 13 about signaler-receiver asymmetries are often confused. This is partly because their 14 authors conflate two conceptions of pragmatics, which generate different accounts of the 15 explanatory target for accounts of the evolution of language. Here we distinguish these 16 conceptions, in order to help specify more precisely the proper explanatory target for 17 language evolution research. 18 Keywords: animal communication, pragmatics, signaler-receiver asymmetry, 19 language evolution 20 21 22 2 23 Signaler-Receiver Asymmetries and Pragmatic Interpretation in Animal Communication 24 25 Gricean Communication and the Evolution of Language 26 Prominent theorists of language evolution have converged on the idea that pragmatic 27 phenomena are of fundamental importance to the emergence of language (Tomasello 1999, 28 2008; Sperber and Wilson 2002; Scott-Phillips 2014, 2015). In particular, some of these authors 29 have argued that it is the emergence of capacities for 'Gricean' or 'ostensive-inferential' 30 communication, operating in conjunction with cooperative motivations, that is the seed of human 31 language. At the heart of these arguments is a conception of human linguistic communication 32 that goes back to Paul Grice (Grice 1957). Grice's central idea was that human communication 33 is made possible by hearers' interpretive comprehension of speakers' communicative intentions. 34 What Grice called 'speaker meaning' is a matter of a speaker producing an utterance (acoustic, 35 written, gestural, or otherwise) with the intention of (a) producing an effect on the psychological 36 states of some receiver, and with the further intention of (b) producing that effect in part by 37 means of the receiver's recognition of that intention. The speaker (or gesturer) intentionally and 38 overtly (or 'ostensively') produces an utterance with the intention of soliciting some response 39 from her interlocutor (typically by aiming to produce some belief in her, or to solicit some 40 action). The hearer infers the speaker's communicative goal through recognizing the speaker's 41 intention to communicate, and infers the content of this intention on the basis of what the speaker 42 said. The speaker's intention is fulfilled just when the receiver recognizes her intention (and 43 when this recognition plays some part in producing the intended effect). Call this the Classical 44 Gricean picture of communication. 45 3 On the Gricean view, communicative intentions can play a foundational role in 46 understanding the nature of language because they are independent of language. Grice took 47 speaker meaning to be conceptually prior to conventional, structured linguistic meaning (Grice 48 1967[1987]). He envisaged an explanation of the standard meanings of words and sentences in 49 terms of 'ossified' speaker meanings; viz., the meanings that speakers in a group regularly – if 50 not always – intend to communicate by utterances. This feature of Grice's account suggests a 51 'pragmatics-first' approach to the evolution of language, since it explains the emergence of 52 conventional semantic properties of linguistic items (such as words and sentences) from acts of 53 producing utterances with communicative intent. 54 The Classical Gricean picture requires more than that sender and receiver possess 55 concepts and draw inferences (conscious or unconscious) that deploy those concepts. It requires 56 that both senders and receivers have a 'Theory of Mind' (hereafter ToM); that is, a capacity to 57 ascribe beliefs and other psychological states to creatures other than themselves. Insofar as 58 Gricean communication presupposes such social cognition, a Gricean approach to understanding 59 the evolution of language introduces a clear explanatory task: to explain the phylogenetic 60 emergence of the relevant capacities in our hominin ancestors. As Origgi and Sperber put it, it 61 implies that "language as we know it developed as an adaptation in a species already involved in 62 inferential communication, and therefore already capable of some serious degree of 63 mindreading... the existence of mindreading in our ancestors was a precondition for the 64 emergence and evolution of language" (2000: 20).1 65 This approach is controversial, since explaining the emergence of such social cognition – 66 including a capacity for propositional and even recursive thoughts – prior to the emergence of 67 propositional-compositional language would seem no less difficult than explaining the evolution 68 4 of language itself.. Incorporating the Classical Gricean view into an account of language 69 evolution thus means trading the 'language Rubicon' for a 'psychological Rubicon' (see Bar-On 70 2013, and this volume). 71 72 Gricean Communication and Signaler-Receiver Asymmetries 73 The Classical Gricean view supposes that to be a Gricean communicator, an individual 74 must be capable not just of intentionally producing and responding to signals, but also of acting 75 with and attributing communicative intentions. The production of utterances with 76 communicative intentions and their comprehension is cognitively demanding, because according 77 to the Classical Gricean view (Sperber 2000; Scott-Phillips 2014, 2015) they require entertaining 78 fourth-order meta-representations of mental states – something that has yet to be identified even 79 in ten-year-old children (Liddle and Nettle, 2006; see Moore, Forthcoming b). Despite this 80 evidence, researchers have often taken it for granted that the abilities required for Gricean 81 communication are present in young children but not in nonhuman animals (e.g., Sperber 2000; 82 Tomasello 2008; Corballis 2011; Scott-Phillips 2014, 2015). Even assuming that nonhuman 83 animals have first-order thoughts (i.e. thoughts about the world, including others' behavior) and 84 possess various concepts and are able to draw inferences (conscious or unconscious) using those 85 concepts, many doubt that they have higher-order thoughts about others' mental states. Thus, 86 Tomasello, Call and Hare conclude that "in contrast to human children, chimpanzees may not 87 understand ... such things as ... communicative intentions" (Tomasello, Call & Hare, 2003: 156). 88 Even apart from animals' comparative lack of ToM capacities, there seems to be a 89 difficulty in regarding animal vocalizations, specifically, as a source of insight into human 90 communication. It has long been assumed that primate vocalizations, especially, are involuntary 91 5 emotional responses to salient stimuli (e.g., Tomasello 2008; although see Slocombe et al. 2010; 92 Slocombe and Zuberbühler 2007; Crockford et al. 2012 for challenges). If this assumption is 93 correct, then primate calls are not a species of intentional behaviour. For this reason, many 94 researchers have argued that we should focus on the comprehension and not the production of 95 primate calls to tell us what we want to know about language evolution. 96 Some of those who adopt the Gricean approach to the evolution of language have argued 97 that the receiver's side of the sender-receiver relationship raises no problems peculiar to human 98 communication, since nonhuman receivers regularly deploy interpretive mechanisms when 99 responding to (even unintentionally produced) conand extra-specific signals. This, it is 100 claimed, reveals a fundamental asymmetry between animal senders and receivers. On this view, 101 defended by Fitch (2010), the real explanatory challenge for language evolution research is to 102 explain the emergence of senders who act with Gricean communicative intentions; the problem 103 of the receivers' contribution was solved long ago. 104 Some empirical data appears to support the speaker-hearer asymmetry claim. Wheeler 105 and Fischer (2012) review evidence suggesting that non-human primates lack the voluntary 106 control over their vocalisations that humans have. In their words, 107 the same neurobiological circuits that are responsible for innate vocalizations, including 108 laughter and reactions to pain in humans, exist in both nonhuman primate and human 109 nonverbal vocal production systems; the more derived parts responsible and necessary for 110 voluntary control of vocalizations seem to be limited to humans, or at least have not been 111 identified in other primates. (2012:197) 112 Thus, in the words of Seyfarth and Cheney, when primates learn about the world from hearing 113 6 another's screams, they "acquire information from signalers who do not, in the human sense, 114 intend to provide it" (2003: 168). 115 Unlike human utterances, calls produced by primates also appear not to be produced with 116 sophisticated other-directed goals in mind. For example, Seyfarth and Cheney have shown that 117 vervet monkeys produce calls that dramatically affect the behavior of their audience, but without 118 seeming to take into account the psychological states of their audience (Seyfarth and Cheney 119 2003). In producing e.g. 'contact barks', baboon callers also seem to show little awareness of 120 their listeners' states (of mind or otherwise) (Cheney et al. 1996). Thus, on the part of signalers, 121 there seem to be only affective reactions to a perceived situation, albeit ones that may exhibit 122 sensitivity to the presence of a suitable audience.2 123 Whereas animal vocal production appears to be unsophisticated, animal receivers show 124 an impressive capacity for making contextual inferences to extract information from others' 125 signals. Thus Seyfarth cites experiments (Bergmann et al. 2003) that show that baboon listeners 126 who witness a sequence such as 'A threat-grunts to B and B screams' must be attributing to A a 127 disposition to act toward B in a very specific way. Seyfarth thinks this supports the view that, as 128 listeners, "baboons (and probably many other animals) deduce information about events and 129 scenes in the world from the vocalizations that other animals make ... extract[ing] detailed, 130 propositional-type information from signalers" even in the absence of sophisticated, intentional 131 production (personal communication). Tomasello, too, finds a "stark contrast" between the 132 "flexible comprehension" exhibited by call receivers and the inflexibility exhibited by call 133 producers (2008: 16f.), and he cites as the reason for the lack of flexibility the fact that 134 nonhuman vocalizations "are mostly very tightly tied to emotions" (2008: 17). If this is right, 135 then there seems to be an asymmetry between inflexible signalers and sophisticated receivers in 136 7 at least some animal communication systems. 137 With this asymmetry in mind, Wheeler and Fischer conclude that "any continuities or 138 parallels that exist between the communication systems of humans and our extant primate 139 relatives reside not in the ability of signal producers to transmit symbolically encoded 140 information, but in the flexible, learned responses of receivers" (2013: 199). Accordingly, they 141 recommend that "a more productive framework" for primate communication research should be 142 "pragmatics, the field of linguistics that examine the role of context in shaping the meaning of 143 linguistic utterances" (2013: 203). 144 Combining the asymmetry claim with a Gricean conception of the task for a theory of the 145 evolution of language, Fitch draws the following conclusion: 146 [A]nimal communication, before language, largely involved signalers who generate 147 signals either automatically (e.g. innate calls) or selfishly ("manipulations"), and thus 148 obeyed no Gricean maxims. Listeners, on the other hand, have been processing these 149 signals inferentially, fulfilling their half of the Gricean equation, for the entire history of 150 communication systems. ... The component of this Gricean model that demands special 151 evolutionary explanation is ... the speaker's contribution to this cooperative endeavor. 152 'Going Gricean,' then, required a fundamental change in the rules of animal 153 communication on the part of signalers, and this step is a logical necessity before 154 language could get off the ground. (2010: 135, emphases added; see also ibid. §4.11). 155 This shifts the target of language evolution research. Followers of Grice take the primary 156 task of language evolution research to be to provide an account of the social and ecological 157 selection pressures that led to the emergence of subjects' capacities to both act with and 158 understand communicative intentions (Sperber & Wilson 1995; Origgi and Sperber 2000; 159 8 Tomasello 2008; Scott-Phillips 2014). On their view, animal communication systems differ from 160 human languages precisely in being fully captured by the (non-Gricean) 'code model', on which 161 neither animal signalers nor animal receivers exhibit Gricean mindreading capacities. Thus, they 162 would deny that there is a signaler-receiver asymmetry that is relevant to the emergence of 163 Gricean communication. By contrast, Fitch claims that animal receivers have long been 164 'fulfilling their half of the Gricean equation'. For Fitch's view to be right, we have to take it for 165 granted that our nonhuman ancestors already had the relevant cognitive abilities needed for 166 flexible, pragmatic interpretation, so that all that would require explanation is the phylogenetic 167 emergence of speakers who were motivated to produce utterances with Gricean communicative 168 intentions. (See also Hurford 2007: 332 and passim.) 169 So, despite agreement about the need for a pragmatics-first approach to language 170 evolution, there are now two different agendas on the table. According to the first, an account of 171 language evolution must explain the emergence in phylogeny of subjects who can act with and 172 attribute communicative intentions. On the second agenda, language evolution research need 173 explain only the emergence of speakers who are able to put existing cognitive capacities to use in 174 the production of communicative acts. 175 The apparent disagreement stems, at least in part, from the presence of two different 176 conceptions of pragmatics. The signaler-receiver asymmetry described above is relevant to the 177 explanation of the evolution of language on one but not the other. If theorists of language 178 evolution are to embrace a pragmatics-first approach, then, before settling on the agenda for a 179 theory of language evolution, they must be clear on this distinction. 180 181 Signaler-Receiver Asymmetries and Pragmatics 182 9 On the approach advocated by Tomasello, Scott-Phillips, Sperber and Wilson, and others, 183 it is not enough that animal receivers extract rich information from signals. What needs to be 184 established is that, when interpreting signals, receivers make inferences about signalers' 185 communicative intentions. But from the fact that receivers extract rich information from the 186 signals they receive (even if they do so inferentially) it does not follow that their doing so 187 depends on their employment of (even a rudimentary) Theory of Mind. Many creatures extract 188 rich information about their physical environment without attributing mental states to anyone. 189 The ability to make inferences about the significance of a call in light of contextual 190 information is one that Grice himself would contrast with the ability to understand 191 communicative intentions. His notion of speaker meaning is introduced in contrast with what he 192 labeled natural meaning. The latter is the sort of significance we assign to various natural signs, 193 as when we say, e.g., "Those dark clouds mean rain". In contrast with utterances that possess 194 speaker meaning, natural signs possess natural meaning independently of anyone's intending to 195 communicate anything by them. An astute observer can learn to recognize natural meaning by 196 learning the causal correlations between the presence of the sign and what it signifies. Thus, the 197 hearer of an animal call can learn that it correlates with the presence of some specific danger 198 whether or not it was produced intentionally, and thereby derive the call's natural meaning 199 independently of attributing communicative intent. 200 Returning to Fitch's formulation of the speaker-hearer asymmetry, if animal signals are 201 issued unintentionally, then it would seem odd to credit receivers with a Gricean interpretation 202 of them. For this would suggest that hearers regularly attribute communicative intentions where 203 none exist. If animal signalers do not 'fulfil their half of the Gricean equation', then at best we 204 could credit animal receivers with regularly – but falsely – attributing communicative intentions. 205 10 If signalers never act with Gricean intentions, such attributions would at best be idle. Moreover, 206 on the face of it, 'receivers' and 'signalers' designate different roles, not distinct subcategories of 207 creatures, with their own distinct psychological capacities. The receiver of an alarm call on one 208 occasion is likely a producer of such a call on another. So whatever psychological capacities 209 animals are thought to possess as receivers, it is unlikely that they disappear when the same 210 animals assume the role of signalers. So either both animal signalers and receivers should be 211 credited with a capacity for ostensive-inferential communication or neither should be. 212 Perhaps when Fitch claims that animal receivers 'fulfill their half of the Gricean 213 equation', he has in mind something less cognitively demanding than the ability to attribute 214 communicative intentions. Perhaps his idea is simply that animal receivers are astute interpreters 215 of the natural significance of unintentionally produced signals. He does write that there is 216 "strong evidence that sophisticated inference is common among primates" (2010: 189). 217 However, while Fitch argues that monkeys, prairie dogs, suricates, ground squirrels, many birds, 218 and even chickens, all produce a great variety of calls that are claimed by Fitch to be 219 "inferentially interpreted" by receivers despite the absence of any "intentional encoding" (2010: 220 191), this would not support the conclusion that these species are Gricean interpreters. 221 If animal receivers are not Gricean interpreters, then this 'pragmatics-first' approach is 222 different from the one advocated by Origgi and Sperber, Tomasello, and other Griceans. In that 223 case, the form of the pragmatics-first approach that focuses primarily on the contextual 224 inferences of animal receivers is only indirectly relevant to their theories of language evolution. 225 Moreover, from the Gricean perspective, once it's acknowledged that animal receivers neither 226 act with nor attribute communicative intentions, then there is no basis for maintaining that 227 animal communication exhibits a 'fundamental asymmetry' that is relevant to a pragmatic 228 11 understanding of language evolution. Whatever asymmetry there is between signaler and 229 receivers, it is not relevant to a Gricean understanding of what is required for the emergence of 230 language. 231 232 Signaler-Receiver Asymmetry and Pragmatic Interpretation: Diagnosis 233 There are two different sorts of cognitive prerequisites for genuinely Gricean communi-234 cation. First, there are interlocking speaker-hearer rational mindreading capacities: the capacity 235 to issue utterances with other-directed informative-communicative intentions, and the capacity 236 for attributing of those intentions (on the hearer's side). In addition, at least on the hearer's side, 237 inferential capacities are also needed to figure out the specific content of the message the speaker 238 is trying to convey, based on the evidence provided by the speaker and the context of the 239 utterance. When drawing a sharp distinction between animal and human communication, and 240 when speculating on the Rubicon that must have been crossed to explain the advent of language, 241 neo-Gricean thinkers focus on the first set of (mindreading) capacities. By contrast, Fitch, 242 Hurford, Wheeler and Fischer, and others (including Scarantino & Clay 2015), who are looking 243 to find evidence for precursors of language in the behaviors of existing animals, focus on the 244 second set of (inferential) capacities. Assuming "inference" is understood in a suitably relaxed 245 fashion it is uncontroversial that inferential capacities exist in the animal kingdom. However, 246 this observation does little to support the conclusion that animal receivers are in any way 247 Gricean interpreters. But then the puzzle for language evolution is as much to explain the 248 emergence of Gricean interpreters as it is to explain how signalers have become Gricean 249 producers. 250 12 If this diagnosis is correct, it clearly reveals that, when Fitch talks about animal receivers 251 as engaging in pragmatic interpretation (and "fulfilling their half of the Gricean equation"), he 252 must have in mind something much weaker than is required by the Classical Gricean view. For, 253 as noted earlier, contextual interpretation need not presuppose the attribution of communicative 254 intentions. So the observed disparity in flexibility between signalers and receivers does not 255 support any symmetry in "fulfilling one's half in the Gricean equation". 256 Fitch's Gricean reading of the asymmetries likely turns on a conflation of two different 257 sorts of pragmatic phenomena, which have been described independently by Carnap (1942) and 258 Grice (1957). Carnap introduced the term 'pragmatics' to cover the study of those aspects of 259 meaning that are dependent on contextual (or 'situational') factors. On this reading, pragmatic 260 phenomena include the various ways in which the same sentence (type) might be interpreted 261 differently in different contexts. (So, for example, "It's raining" might be used to convey a 262 different proposition on different occasions.) Pragmatics in Carnapian sense can also cover the 263 ways in which an animal alarm call (understood as a type) might be assigned different 264 significances (and so elicit different responses) in different circumstances. Consider for 265 example, the finding by Palombit, Seyfarth, and Cheney (1997) that male baboons are more 266 likely to respond to calls produced by females with whom they have mated than other females – 267 particularly where those females have a dependent offspring and are in the presence of a 268 potentially infanticidal male. Wheeler and Fischer's treatment of such differential responses as 269 pragmatic phenomena is in keeping with the Carnapian notion. 270 Although Grice's work on pragmatics encompassed the ways in which the interpretation 271 of words and sentences can vary with their use (and thus context), he was primarily interested in 272 a deeper phenomenon than the context-sensitivity of interpretation – namely the dependence of 273 13 linguistic meaning on a special kind of (communicative, audience-directed) intentions. He 274 offered an analysis designed to capture the structure of those intentions, which must be 275 understood by hearers if they are to comprehend the speaker's intended meaning. In addition to 276 an analysis of the nature of speaker meaning, Grice (1975), introduced a set of heuristics – 277 'Conversational Maxims' – to which hearers can appeal in trying to make sense of speakers' 278 communicative intentions (referred to by Fitch 2010: 135, quoted above). 279 On the Gricean view, to engage in pragmatic interpretation just is to attribute 280 communicative intentions. Therefore on the Carnapian but not the Gricean version of 281 pragmatics, there can be phenomena of pragmatic interpretation even in the absence of 282 intentional communication. To recap: 283 Carnapian pragmatics is the study of the variation (and derivation) of the significance of 284 sentence (or signal) types with the context of production. 285 Gricean pragmatics is the study of the production of utterances with communicative 286 intentions and their mindreading interpretation by interlocutors. 287 These different notions of pragmatics have made their way into the literature on animal 288 communication without being properly distinguished. Moreover, they yield different accounts of 289 what is involved in a pragmatics-first approach to language evolution. If we treat Fitch, Wheeler 290 and Fischer, Cheney and Seyfarth, as making claims about Carnapian pragmatic phenomena, 291 then it is clear that what they have in mind is not the attribution of communicative intentions, but 292 simply hearers' ability to make discriminations about the significance of various bits of 293 environmental information – including information derived from unintentionally produced alarm 294 calls. This is not the sense of pragmatics to which Tomasello and others are appealing when 295 giving an account of the Gricean foundations of language evolution. 296 14 Conflating these two different senses of pragmatics threatens to be pernicious. For 297 example, when observing that primate receivers of calls can derive different messages from the 298 same calls in different situations – and thus engage in Carnaptian interpretation – one can 299 mistakenly conclude that understanding such interpretation can help account for the phylogenetic 300 emergence of abilities needed for Gricean communication. While there may be some overlap in 301 the abilities deployed in Carnapian contextual interpretation and Gricean mindreading 302 interpretation, the former are in no way sufficient for the latter. Since Gricean but not Carnapian 303 interpretation requires possession of sophisticated ToM, there could be (and likely are) creatures 304 capable of Carnapian contextual interpretation alone. 305 At times, the slide between the two senses of 'pragmatics' is made explicitly. For 306 example, Scott-Philips (2014, 2015) argues that there is a fundamental, qualitative difference 307 between animal communication, which can be fully understood on the 'code model', and human 308 communication, which is essentially 'ostensive-inferential' (Scott-Phillips (2014, 2015). On the 309 neo-Gricean view that he defends, it is the absence of the ability for ostensive-inferential 310 communication that explains why non-human great apes did not develop language. Pragmatic 311 phenomena on this approach are understood in the Gricean way. Yet, Scott-Phillips reverts to 312 the Carnapian conception when defining pragmatics as "the branch of linguistics that studies 313 meaning and language use in context" (2015: glossary; see also Scott-Phillips 2010). His use of 314 the term 'pragmatics' is thus not univocal. The same equivocation seems to be present in work 315 by Fitch (2010), Hurford (2007), and sometimes even Tomasello (2008: 14-15). 316 317 Concluding Remarks 318 15 There are interesting asymmetries between signalers and receivers in animal 319 communication – including these described by Fischer and Wheeler (2012) and others. Indeed, 320 even within Gricean dyads, there are marked differences in 'cognitive load' between speakers 321 and hearers (Moore, 2013). For example, Gricean communication requires that hearers infer 322 speakers' communicative goals – but not that the speakers infer their own goals. This suggests 323 that Gricean communication is cognitively more demanding on hearers, reversing the asymmetry 324 claims considered earlier. 325 Our goal here has not been to argue against all of the assumptions that motivated the 326 original asymmetry claims. For example, the possibility that some primate calls are not 327 produced voluntarily is at least partly independent of questions about the phylogenetic 328 emergence of the capacity for Gricean communication. Some empirical evidence suggests that 329 great apes' call production may involve more voluntary control than has been assumed 330 (Slocombe et al. 2007, 2010; Crockford et al. 2012). However, while voluntary control over 331 production is necessary for acting with Gricean intentions, it is not sufficient. So this empirical 332 evidence does not show that these calls are produced with Gricean intentions; and their precise 333 relevance for the study of language evolution still requires clarification. 334 We hope to have shown that the pragmatic asymmetries highlighted by Fitch (2010) and 335 Wheeler and Fischer (2012) are at best indirectly relevant to the study of language evolution. 336 Failure to recognize this is likely to undermine our interpretation of comparative data, since an 337 equivocal use of the label 'pragmatics' risks masking deep differences between the two 338 conceptions of the task of language evolution research. For example, on the Carnapian 339 conception of pragmatics, existing forms of animal communication may seem to be continuous 340 with and more immediately relevant to theorizing about the evolution of language than on the 341 16 traditional Gricean conception. That is why Tomasello, Scott-Phillips and others have argued 342 that animal communication does not illuminate the origins of language, and that language 343 evolution required the emergence in phylogeny of a completely new form of communication that 344 presupposed the capacity to act with and understand communicative intentions. 345 Our view is that language evolution research would now be best served by asking what 346 could constitute genuine precursors to Gricean communication, and by looking for evidence of 347 such precursors in animal communication. One way to pursue this line of research (favoured by 348 Bar-On 2013, and this volume), would be to consider what forms of language (or proto-349 language) might have emerged in phylogeny via the operation of non-Gricean mechanisms, and 350 prior to the emergence of a capacity to produce and comprehend utterances with communicative 351 intentions. Recognizing forms of animal communication, like expressive communication, that 352 resemble Gricean communication in certain (but not all) respects and identifying non-Gricean 353 mechanisms (such as ontogenetic ritualization, voluntary control, and imitation) may then 354 provide valuable insights into the emergence of human communication in phylogeny. 355 An alternative approach (Moore, 2016, Forthcoming a, Forthcoming b) argues that 356 classical interpretations overstate the socio-cognitive abilities that Gricean communication 357 requires, and that once we reconsider the demands of Gricean communication, it is appropriate to 358 conclude that great apes are already Gricean communicators. On this approach, other instances 359 of Gricean communicators in the animal kingdom may not be rare – rendering the study of 360 animal communication directly relevant to understanding the evolution of language after all. 361 These different approaches to studying precursors or early forms of Gricean 362 communication may well be complementary rather than incompatible. The fact that they can be 363 17 pulled apart, however, suggests that there can be several different paths to progress in language 364 evolution research. All approaches could benefit from a more fine-grained characterization of 365 the various asymmetries that exist in animal communication systems, as well as from a more 366 nuanced account of what is entailed by a pragmatics-first approach to language evolution. 367 368 Notes on Contributors 369 Dorit Bar-On is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut. She has published 370 widely on issues in mind, language, and epistemology, and is the author of Speaking My Mind: 371 Expression and Self-Knowledge (OUP, 2004). She is Director of the Expression, 372 Communication, and Origins of Meaning research group. 373 Richard Moore is a post-doctoral researcher at the Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt-374 Universität zu Berlin. He writes on the changes in communication and social learning that led to 375 the phylogenetic emergence of uniquely human forms of cognition and culture, and conducts 376 empirical studies of the communicative abilities of children and animals. 377 378 Further Reading 379 Cheney and Seyfarth's (2008) Baboon Metaphysics: The Evolution of a Social Mind and 380 Tomasello's (2008) Origins of Human Communication are classic books on primate cognition 381 and communication. Tomasello's book, especially, develops an important account of language 382 evolution; as does Fitch's The Evolution of Language (2010). 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