Growth points from the very beginning

David McNeill | Department of Psychology, University of Chicago

Susan D. Duncan

Jonathan Cole | University of Bournemouth and Clinical Neurological Sciences, Clinical Neurophysiology, Poole Hospital, U. K.

Shaun Gallagher | Department of Philosophy, University of Central Florida

Bennett Bertenthal | Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University

Early humans formed language units consisting of global and discrete dimensions of semiosis in dynamic opposition, or ‘growth points.’ At some point, gestures gained the power to orchestrate actions, manual and vocal, with significances other than those of the actions themselves, giving rise to cognition framed in dual terms. However, our proposal emphasizes natural selection of joint gesture-speech, not ‘gesture-first’ in language origin.

Keywords: social interaction, pantomime, gesture, growth point theory, thinking-for-speaking

Published online: 07 March 2008
https://doi.org/10.1075/is.9.1.09mcn

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2018. The relationship between co-speech gesture production and macrolinguistic discourse abilities in people with focal brain injury. Neuropsychologia 117 ► pp. 440 ff.

Caselli, Maria Cristina, Pasquale Rinaldi, Silvia Stefanini & Virginia Volterra

2012. Early Action and Gesture “Vocabulary” and Its Relation With Word Comprehension and Production. Child Development 83:2 ► pp. 526 ff.

Gallagher, Shaun

2018. In The Mystery of Rationality, ► pp. 83 ff.

Hall, Matthew L.

2017. Pros and cons of blurring gesture-language lines: An evolutionary linguistic perspective. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 40

McNeill, David

2015. In International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, ► pp. 109 ff.

McNeill, David, Liesbet Quaeghebeur & Susan Duncan

2010. In Handbook of Phenomenology and Cognitive Science, ► pp. 519 ff.

Reno, Joshua

2012. Technically Speaking: On Equipping and Evaluating “Unnatural” Language Learners. American Anthropologist 114:3 ► pp. 406 ff.

Salo, Virginia C., Pier F. Ferrari & Nathan A. Fox

2019. The role of the motor system in action understanding and communication: Evidence from human infants and non‐human primates. Developmental Psychobiology 61:3 ► pp. 390 ff.

Wacewicz, Sławomir, Przemysław Żywiczyński & Sylwester Orzechowski

2016. Visible movements of the orofacial area. Gesture 15:2 ► pp. 250 ff.

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