Dear all,

The CEU Department of Cognitive Science invites you to the following talk by:

Peter Gärdenfors (Lund University)*

*Please note, this is a talk by the same speaker as the talk on Wednesday, 11th of February, but on another topic.

Date: Tuesday, February 10, 2026

Time: 4 pm (to 5:30 pm) CET

Venue: Auditorium

Zoom : Meeting ID: 969 2496 5784 Passcode: 471712

Chair: Gergo Csibra

Title:

From showing to telling: On the evolutionary path from pantomime to language

Abstract:

Pantomime has two functions. The first is to show how something is done. This is used in teaching contexts. The second is to tell about something – events, stories, gossip, plans, dreams, etc. The second use has been extended successively to protosign, protolanguage, and language.

In this talk I analyse the transition from the first to the second use of pantomime. How did the shift from showing to telling happen? Apparently, this is a crucial step in the evolution of language. My account is based on comparing the intentions behind a pantomime. In a teaching context, a pantomime is used by a mimer (teacher) with the intention that the onlooker (student) perceives a sequence of actions that the onlooker should perform. In a communicative context, the mimer acts with the intention to ostensively communicate a message to an audience. 

A following step in the evolution of language concerns the partitioning of a pantomime in smaller units. A pantomime for teaching consists of ‘holophrases’ in the terminology of Arbib. In the evolution of language, there has been a discretization so the holophrases are replaced with conventionalized gestures or words. My account of this development into discrete parts will be formed in terms of how humans structure mental representations of events, where the basic components are actor, action, patient, and result.

Anyone not affiliated with CEU wishing to attend in-person in Vienna must reply here to get access to the lecture hall.

Best,

Mariem