Becoming Human
From pointing gestures to syntax
Author
What do the pointing gesture, the imitation of new complex motor patterns, the evocation of absent objects and the grasping of others’ false beliefs all have in common? Apart from being (one way or other) involved in the language, they all would share a demanding requirement – a second mental centre within the subject. This redefinition of the simulationism is extended in the present book in two directions. Firstly, mirror-neurons and, likewise, animal abilities connected with the visual field of their fellows, although they certainly constitute important landmarks, would not require this second mental centre. Secondly, others’ beliefs would have given rise not only to predicative communicative function but also to pre-grammatical syntax. The inquiry about the evolutionary-historic origin of language focuses on the cognitive requirements on it as a faculty (but not to the indirect causes such as environmental changes or greater co-operation), pays attention to children, and covers other human peculiarities as well, e.g., symbolic play, protodeclaratives, self-conscious emotions, and interactional or four-hand tasks.
[Advances in Consciousness Research, 81] 2011. xvii, 402 pp.
Publishing status: Available
© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Table of Contents
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Introduction | pp. 1–10
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Section one. Evolutionary precursors
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Chapter 1. Monkeys’ mirror neurons | pp. 13–36
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Chapter 2. Chimpanzees and the visual field of the conspecific | pp. 37–46
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Section two. The basic human ability
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Chapter 3. The three modes of processing the eyes of others | pp. 49–60
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Chapter 4. Pointing gestures | pp. 61–78
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Chapter 5. Four-hand co-operative actions and children’s interpersonal co-ordination games | pp. 79–88
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Section three. Specifying some necessary requisites of language
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Chapter 6. Saussurean parity and the perception of a radically not-own self | pp. 91–104
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Chapter 7. About evocation | pp. 105–112
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Chapter 8. Symbolic play: Developments in the simulatory centre | pp. 113–136
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Chapter 9. From symbolic play to linguistic symbol | pp. 137–158
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Section four. The origin of predication and syntax
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Chapter 10. From the general exposition to the crucial requisite achieved by the protodeclarative | pp. 161–176
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Chapter 11. Toward the original perception of false beliefs of others: The importance of the learned sign | pp. 177–188
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Chapter 12. Between motor learning and the perception of beliefs of others: The crucial role of the protodeclarative | pp. 189–202
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Section five. Pregrammatical, theme-rheme syntax: Revisiting Frege and Vygotsky
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Chapter 13. From beliefs of others to communicative predication | pp. 205–218
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Chapter 14. Revisiting Frege: How can a predication be at one and the same time true and not redundant? | pp. 219–228
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Chapter 15. Communicative functions, Vygotskian ‘pure predicate’ and conceptual semantics: Various questions about predication | pp. 229–238
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Chapter 16. Connecting with the concepts of theme (or topic) and rheme (or comment) | pp. 239–254
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Section six. From original to present-day predication: Links and grammatical syntax
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Chapter 17. Meaning and the different types of link | pp. 257–270
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Chapter 18. Expressive speech and syntactic links: A hypothesis on the historic origins of those links, and on some other questions, along the way | pp. 271–302
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Chapter 19. Historical grammaticalisation: The answers are lacking, but the questions are good | pp. 303–314
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Section seven. Syntax beyond predication
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Chapter 20. Interrogative communication | pp. 317–336
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Chapter 21. Toward complex syntax: The crucial role of reported speech | pp. 337–358
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Preliminary conclusion and the main thesis recapitulated | pp. 359–362
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Glossary | pp. 391–394
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Author index | pp. 395–400
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Subject index | pp. 401–402
“Teresa Bejarano [...] is thoroughly familiar with the literature on language, developmental psychology, and primate behavior. She argues that the special qualities of the human mind depend on the emergence of what she calls a second center that confers the ability to simulate the minds of others [...]. I think second center, at least in Bejarano's treatment, offers more theoretical mileage than do these other concepts—working memory, imitation, recursion [...]. I can thoroughly recommend this stimulating book.”
Michael C. Corballis, University of Auckland, in PsycCRITIQUES, March 7, 2012. Vol. 57, Release 10, Article 3
Cited by
Cited by 4 other publications
Bejarano, Teresa
2022. The Most Demanding Moral Capacity: Could Evolution Provide Any Base?. Isidorianum 31:2 ► pp. 91 ff. 
Kang, Dahyun, Sonya S. Kwak, Hanbyeol Lee, Eun Ho Kim & JongSuk Choi
2020. 2020 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), ► pp. 11383 ff.
Singh, Aditi & Arvind K. Bansal
2023. Synchronized Colored Petri Net Based Multimodal Modeling and Real-Time Recognition of Conversational Spatial Deictic Gestures. In Intelligent Computing [Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, 739], ► pp. 1227 ff.
van Breda, Ward, Jan Treur & Arlette van Wissen
2012. Analysis and Support of Lifestyle via Emotions Using Social Media. In Social Informatics [Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 7710], ► pp. 275 ff.
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Subjects
Consciousness Research
Psychology
Main BIC Subject
JMR: Cognition & cognitive psychology
Main BISAC Subject
PSY008000: PSYCHOLOGY / Cognitive Psychology & Cognition