Christian Kliesch

PhD (Psychology)

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Evolution Language · 31 March 2026 ·

Helpless infants turn to Grice: An embodied account of the emergence of communication in infancy

Title: *Helpless infants turn to Grice: An embodied account of the emergence of communication in infancy**

Abstract:

Many pragmatic accounts have focussed on specific cognitive abilities, such as the ability to meta-represent others’ beliefs to establish communicative intent, to explain why humans have evolved ostensive-referential communication. These are argued to be distinct human abilities (Sperber & Wilson, 1995) with specific ontogenetic precursors (Csibra, 2010). In this talk, I want to suggest an alternative based on the uniquely human developmental trajectory in which ready-to-learn infants are constrained in their ability to explore the world. This fundamentally changes how infants learn to engage with their environment. Helpless infants instead learn to pay attention and coordinate with others. This ultimately leads to the establishment of key behavioural patterns that provide the foundations for ostensive-referential communication system in humans.

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In my Proceedings B paper on postnatal dependency, I have mainly discussed the role of human infants’ prolonged period of dependency in the context of human social learning. However, looking at the unique developmental trajectory of motor and social learning also has potential implications on the emergence of uniquely-human forms of communication, in particular the emergence of ostensive-referential communication systems. In fact, many of the alternative theories that I have discussed in the paper are first and foremost theories of pragmatic communication. I will address these points in a talk at the EvoPrag forum on April 24th, 15:00 CET. You can find the abstract below: