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Pragmatics & Cognition volume 20 number 2 2012 Editor Marcelo Dascal Tel Aviv University Associate Editors Jens Allwood University of Göteborg Itiel E. Dror University College London Yaron M. Senderowicz Tel Aviv University Benny Shanon The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Stephen Stich Rutgers University Yorick Wilks University of Sheffield John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam / Philadelphia UNCORRECTED PROOFS © JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY 1st proofs Board of Consulting Editors Jerome S. Bruner, (Psychology) New York Andy Clark, (Philosophy/Cognitive Sciences) University of Edinburgh Umberto Eco, (Semiotics/Cognitive Science) University of Bologna Willem F.G. Haselager, (Cognition and Technology) Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour James Higginbotham, (Philosophy/Linguistics) University of Southern California, Los Angeles Jaakko Hintikka, (Philosophy/Logic) Boston University Sachiko Ide, (English/Pragmatics) Japan Women’s University, Tokyo Willard McCarty, (Humanities Computing) King’s College London Jan Nuyts, (Pragmatics/Cognitive Science) University of Antwerp Dan Sperber, (Anthropology/Pragmatics) Institut Jean Nicod, Paris Deborah Tannen, (Pragmatics) Georgetown University, Washington D.C. Boris M. Velichkovsky, (Neuroscience/Computer Science) Dresden University of Technology Anna Wierzbicka, (Linguistics) Australian National University, Canberra Chaoqun Xie, (Pragmatics) Fujian Normal University UNCORRECTED PROOFS © JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY 1st proofs Special Commemorative Issue TWENTIETH BIRTHDAY of PRAGMATICS & COGNITION Culture – Language – Cognition Edited by Marcelo Dascal Tel Aviv University UNCORRECTED PROOFS © JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY 1st proofs UNCORRECTED PROOFS © JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY 1st proofs Table of contents Opening remarks 231 Introduction 233 Marcelo Dascal Articles No need for instinct: Coordinated communication as an emergent self organized process 241 Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr. and Nathaniel Clark Like the breathability of air: Embodied embedded communication 263 Pim Haselager Linguistic fire and human cognitive powers 275 Stephen J. Cowley Language: Between cognition, communication and culture 295 Anne Reboul Language is an instrument for thought. Really? 317 Jan Nuyts Cognition, communication, and readiness for language 334 Jens Allwood Understanding others requires shared concepts 356 Anna Wierzbicka Replies Not quite organizational: A response to Raymond W. Gibbs and Nathaniel Clark 381 Daniel Everett UNCORRECTED PROOFS © JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY 1st proofs vi Table of contents Breathability, learnability, and the illusion of design: A response to Haselager 386 Daniel L. Everett Exocognitive Linguistics: A response to Cowley 388 Daniel L. Everett Response to Reboul: Between cognition, communication, and culture 392 Daniel L. Everett Language can help us think. Really. Reply to Jan Nuyts 408 Daniel L. Everett Linguistics, Truth, and Culture: A Response to Jens Allwood 411 Daniel L. Everett Understanding others requires adaptive thinking: Response to Wierzbicka 417 Daniel L. Everett UNCORRECTED PROOFS © JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY 1st proofs Opening remarks Most scientists would be thrilled, as I am, to have their ideas taken seriously enough to be made the focus of an entire journal issue. Before beginning, there- fore, let me offer my profound thanks to Marcelo Dascal and each of the authors of this special edition, for taking the time to shape and contribute to this vol- ume about Language: The Cultural Tool. Their cogent and incisive criticisms have helped clear my thinking on many issues. This is not to minimize disagreements between me and my commentators. There are many and some are profound, touching on foundational assumptions about linguistics, as well as the philosophy and psychology of language and the mind. Overall, however, this discussion as a whole ought to convince readers of two things. First, that many researchers agree that the idea of an innate Universal Grammar, UG, (of any variety) has passed its sell-by date. Second, that the role of culture is greater than they may have thought prior to reading this special issue of Pragmatics and Cognition. Pragmatics & Cognition 20:2 (2012), 231–231. doi 10.1075/pc.20.2.01ope UNCORRECTEDissn 0929–0907 / e-issn 1569–9943 © John Benjamins PROOFSPublishing Company © JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY 1st proofs UNCORRECTED PROOFS © JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY 1st proofs Introduction Marcelo Dascal Dear readers, authors, reviewers, referees, members of the Board of Consulting Editors, Associate Editors and all those who have collaborated throughout the years with Pragmatics & Cognition. Welcome to this very Special Issue, which commemorates the 20th year of existence of our journal. Were it not for your interest, loyalty, enthusiasm and steady cooperation, the journal would not have achieved the aims set up at its foundation and the prestige it enjoys. To refresh our memory, here is how the Introduction to Volume I spelled out our vision: A new journal, specially an interdisciplinary one, helps to shape a new research niche, carved out by a critical mass of work already in the making, but which has not so far found an adequate vehicle of diffusion and crystallization. The niche Pragmatics & Cognition has identified, and purports to develop, lies at the inter- section of two rapidly expanding areas of research: Pragmatics and Cognition. Each of these areas is concerned with one of the two most important kinds of (human) activity — the use of symbols in the performance of mental operations. Though the interdependence between these activities has been often asserted and debated, it has not so far received the kind of systematic attention and specific re- search it well deserves. It is to the investigation of the interrelations between these two domains that Pragmatics & Cognition is primarily devoted. The Introduction goes on stressing the broad sense in which both ‘Pragmatics’ and ‘Cognition’ should be taken in our newly created journal, the variety of disciplines for which it would be relevant, and the necessary presence of discussions and criti- cal reviews as a sine qua non for the growth of understanding and knowledge, especially for shaping an interdisciplinary niche that purports to become an open space rather than a closed disciplinary sphere. The research niche P&C developed turned out to be far from static. It had to satisfy a growing interest, manifested in many submissions and in proposals of expanding its scope towards new aspects of its announced purposes. As a result, in the course of its dynamic evolution, P&C not only fulfilled its initial promises Pragmatics & Cognition 20:2 (2012), 233–240. doi 10.1075/pc.20.2.02int UNCORRECTEDissn 0929–0907 / e-issn 1569–9943 © John Benjamins PROOFSPublishing Company © JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY 1st proofs 234 Marcelo Dascal and goals. It was virtually forced to expand its original vision, slowly encompass- ing many more domains and disciplines, where the interaction between pragmat- ics and cognition is acknowledged as a fundamental ingredient and is usefully explored both in the journal’s regular and Special Issues. Part of this expansion consisted in acknowledging the relevance of recent technological developments to our concerns. Accordingly, we launched a series of Special Issues focused on ‘Cognition and Technology’. The first of these Special Issues, published in 2005 as Volume 13, Number 3, explored the Cog-Tech connection, bearing the title “Cognitive Technologies and the Pragmatics of Cognition”. The significance of the pragmatics-cognition-technology interface was soon recognized by authors and readers and was thereafter naturally embedded in the ensuing regular issues of P&C as articles, discussions and book reviews. From our modest two issues per volume the journal’s size thus jumped to three yearly issues, a total of 600 pages per volume. It is in the light of this brief historical summary that the present Special Commemorative Issue has been conceived. Its chosen theme and focal author il- lustrate the journal’s original goals, achievements, and issues debated and show why P&C is proud to have become a dynamic forum for innovative thinking and dialogue, and looks forward to continuing to pave the way for ever more to come. In Volume I, Number 1, 1993, an American linguist who graduated at the University of Campinas, Brazil, specializing in Amazonian languages, published a paper titled “Sapir, Reichenbach, and the syntax of tense in Pirahã”. Daniel L. Everett, who had been working in the Amazon forest with the Pirahã tribe for years, and became Associate Professor and chair of the Department of Linguistics at the University of Pittsburgh, argued in this paper that the adoption of a param- etrized neo- Reichenbachian model of tense syntax was able to account for tense- related facts in Pirahã, e.g., for its speakers’ lack of concern for precision in time statements. His conclusion was that this model offered new support for Sapir’s lin- guistic relativity hypothesis. He was thus suggesting a syntactical solution for what rather a context dependent, viz. pragmatic phenomenon. Everett’s hypothesis thus fit as a glove P&C’s objectives: the investigation of the interdependence between the use of language and cognition, the growing development of new trends in linguistics and in the recently born Cognitive Sciences, the acknowledgment of the necessarily interdisciplinary character of these disciplines, and the elabora-
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