Neuroscience

Cognitive science

Grice

Language development

Pragmatics

Developmental psychology

Philosophy

Cognition

Cognitive psychology

Psychology

Linguistics

Human language

Human communication

Communication

Philosophy Compass

Humans alone acquire language. According to one influential school of thought, we do this because we possess a uniquely human ability to act with and attribute “Gricean” communicative intentions. A challenge for this view is that attributing communicative intent seems to require cognitive abilities that infant language learners lack. After considering a range of responses to this challenge, I argue that infant language development can be explained, because Gricean communication is cognitively less demanding than many suppose. However, a consequence of this is that abilities for Gricean communication are unlikely to be uniquely human.

Gricean communication, language development, and animal minds