Prof. Michael Tomasello, Duke University (invited speaker)
Time: Thursday, 22 October 2026, 16ct-18h
Venue: --Online via Zoom-- ("live stream" also in: Room 027, Brechtbau, Wilhelmstr. 50, 72074 Tübingen)
Title: Common Ground in Children's Early Communication
Abstract: The importance of common ground is especially clear in humans’ use of the pointing gesture. Because a protruding finger is so decidedly indeterminate, commutative acts based solely on the pointing gesture require serious “mind reading” on the part of communicator and recipient in order to establish both a common ground topic and a perspectival focus. Children almost always produce and comprehend the pointing gesture before they master conventional linguistic devices (the evolutionary hypothesis being that early humans pointed for one another before mastering conventional linguistic devices).
Experimental research reveals how young children's production and comprehension of the pointing gesture is structured by common ground and how such deictic communication paves the way for conventional linguistic communication.
Abstract: There is an influential family of discourse theories which hold that the main building blocks of a discourse model are sets built from worlds: beliefs and commitments are represented by sets of worlds, questions and the common ground are represented by sets of sets of worlds, and so on. These container theories,as I propose to call them, analyse a discourse by means of formal rules that map sets to sets. Prominent members of this family of theories have been proposed by Farkas and Bruce (2010), Portner (2007), and Roberts (2012). The main purpose of this workshop is to discuss empirical, conceptual, and methodological problems that container theories may be facing. I argue that the problems are so serious that the container approach requires replacement rather than repair, and I will present two types of alternative models whose main building blocks are beliefs and commitments, respectively.
