人类的表达是开放式的,多才多艺,多样,从普通语言到绘画,从夸张的情感展示到有助于协调的微运动。在这里,我们提出并捍卫这种表达多样性由相互关联的认知能力组合在一起的主张,其演变的功能是信息意图的表达和识别。我们描述了进化动力学通常如何将通信引导到统计互利的狭窄领域,以及人类的表达是如何被释放的。相关的认知能力是对生活在伴侣选择社会生态中的认知适应;它们是,相应地,正常发展的人类认知表型的一部分,早期出现并可靠地在个体发育中出现。换句话说,我们确定我们物种的社会生态学的独特特征来解释人类是如何以及为什么,只有人类,进化了认知能力,反过来,导致表达方式和表达方式的巨大多样性和开放性。语言使用只是这些表达方式之一,尽管显然很重要。我们进行跨物种比较,描述相关的认知能力如何以渐进的方式演变,并调查释放的表达如何不仅促进语言使用,但在许多其他领域也有新颖的行为,着眼于联合行动的例子,教学,惩罚,和艺术,所有这些在人类社会中无处不在,但在其他物种中相对罕见。这种多样性很大程度上来自人类表达的分级方面,它可以用来以创造性和新的方式满足信息意图。我们的目标是帮助重新定位认知语用学,作为一种现象,它不是语言交流的补充,也是语言科学的边缘,而是人类行为的许多最显著特征的基础,社会,和文化。
Human expression is open-ended, versatile, and diverse, ranging from ordinary language use to painting, from exaggerated displays of affection to micro-movements that aid coordination. Here we present and defend the claim that this expressive diversity is united by an interrelated suite of cognitive capacities, the evolved functions of which are the expression and recognition of informative intentions. We describe how evolutionary dynamics normally leash communication to narrow domains of statistical mutual benefit, and how expression is unleashed in humans. The relevant cognitive capacities are cognitive adaptations to living in a partner choice social ecology; and they are, correspondingly, part of the ordinarily developing human cognitive phenotype, emerging early and reliably in ontogeny. In other words, we identify distinctive features of our species\' social ecology to explain how and why humans, and only humans, evolved the cognitive capacities that, in turn, lead to massive diversity and open-endedness in means and modes of expression. Language use is but one of these modes of expression, albeit one of manifestly high importance. We make cross-species comparisons, describe how the relevant cognitive capacities can evolve in a gradual manner, and survey how unleashed expression facilitates not only language use, but also novel behaviour in many other domains too, focusing on the examples of joint action, teaching, punishment, and art, all of which are ubiquitous in human societies but relatively rare in other species. Much of this diversity derives from graded aspects of human expression, which can be used to satisfy informative intentions in creative and new ways. We aim to help reorient cognitive pragmatics, as a phenomenon that is not a supplement to linguistic communication and on the periphery of language science, but rather the foundation of the many of the most distinctive features of human behaviour, society, and culture.