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1 results

  • 4 - The Origin of the Interaction Engine and Its Role in Language Evolution

  • Stephen C. Levinson, Max-Planck-Institut für Psycholinguistik, The Netherlands
  • Book:
    The Interaction Engine
    Published online:
    16 May 2025
    Print publication:
    19 June 2025, pp 54-106
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  • Summary

    There are clues to the origin of language in the interaction engine: (a) there is some continuity between the turn-taking behaviour of humans and other primates; (b) early hominins were most likely gesture communicators like present-day great apes; (c) there is early development of turn-taking in infants; (d) languages richly draw on spatial concepts, suggesting a gestural origin since gesture is a spatial communication system; (e) human mind reading may have an origin in a generalization of maternal empathy; (f) language syntax draws on interactive organization.